-PTI   The Gujarat government has made a request to the Centre not to ban Endosulfan, an agriculture pesticide found to be an organic pollutant, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said in the Rajya Sabha on Friday. Answering questions, he said production, sale and use of Endosulfan has been banned by Supreme Court, through an interim order, on May 13 in the country. “What the Supreme Court said, we will oblige,” he said. In reply to...

Beware of what you put in your Facebook messages or your tweets. Your friends and followers may not be the only ones reading them. Chances are government sleuths would be vetting these private messages. This follows a home ministry directive to the department of telecom, asking it to "ensure effective monitoring of Twitter and Facebook". While "effective monitoring" has not been defined, sources said the MHA's intention is complete surveillance of...

After a four-decade battle, Indian lawmakers took the first formal step toward creating an independent anticorruption agency on Thursday, introducing a bill in Parliament that would appoint a powerful ombudsman, or Lokpal, to investigate wrongdoing by government officials. But the draft of the law, which exempts the prime minister, members of Parliament and many other officials from the Lokpal’s jurisdiction, was roundly rejected by many of the people who had...

The Union Government has announced that it would bring the Lokpal Bill in the monsoon session of Parliament which is expected to pass it in the winter session. The all-party meeting held on the Lokpal issue damned the civil society and passed a one-line resolution: “The all-party meeting agreed that the government should bring before the next session of Parliament a strong and effective Lokpal Bill following established procedures.” The...

The Lokpal Bill is in danger of skidding off the rails. As it is introduced in Parliament, eminent activist Aruna Roy tells Shoma Chaudhury why we should not rush into it. THE LOKPAL BILL is now being debated in Parliament, almost 40 years after the idea was first mooted. Unfortunately, parented on one side by decades of wilful government inertia and, on the other, by the panicked hustle of ‘Team...