-PTI   After a not so pleasant experience of engaging with Anna Hazare's team in drafting of the Lok Pal Bill, the government says that there will be no such experiment in the future. HRD Minister Kapil Sibal, one of the key members of the joint committee for drafting the Lok Pal Bill, also maintains that it cannot be cited as a precedent. He says the draft of the bill will undergo changes...

-PTI   With an all-party meeting scheduled on July 3 to discuss the Lokpal Bill, it would be subsequently tabled in the Parliament in the monsoon session, Union Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs V Narayansamy said today. The "bill will certainly be tabled" before the Parliament in the monsoon session starting on August 1, Narayanasamy told reporters at the airport here, adding, Congress alone was taking efforts to bring in the...

-The Business Standard   Hazare's job is done, time now for people's representatives The term “civil society” has been used and abused at will these past few months in India. In a clever coup staged with the active involvement of a section of the media, a clutch of social activists and retired civil servants was allowed to project itself as “a representative of civil society”. A confused government, a directionless ruling alliance...

-The Hindu   There is good news for 47.50 lakh domestic workers in the country: they will now be entitled to health insurance cover under the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY). The extension of the medical insurance scheme, approved by the Union Cabinet here on Thursday, envisages smart card-based cashless health insurance cover of up to Rs. 30,000 annually to below poverty line workers in any empanelled hospital in the country. The RSBY will...

Talks fail; Hazare threatens fast from August 16 The Joint Drafting Committee on the Lokpal Bill ended its deliberations on Tuesday without a common text, and the government has decided to go ahead with its plan of consulting political parties and Chief Ministers on the two different versions before getting the Cabinet to clear a final draft. Expressing “deep disappointment” at what it said was the government's watered down version of a...