-The Telegraph The Centre has rejected a plea for removal of K.G. Balakrishnan as National Human Rights Commission chairperson for alleged assets accumulation when he was Chief Justice of India from January 2007 to June 2010. The Union home ministry said papers relating to Balakrishnan’s alleged corruption had been sent to the Union law ministry “for taking appropriate action”. In a recent letter to Common Cause, an NGO, the home ministry said...

-The Times of India   In a stunning twist to the 2G case, an audio tape of a CBI senior public prosecutor purportedly advising a key accused on how to counter prosecution's charge has emerged, breathing fresh life into the mega-swindle and bringing fresh trouble for the government. The tape sent to the CBI anonymously has the agency's senior public prosecutor A K Singh speaking to Sanjay Chandra, MD of Unitech and...

-The Hindustan Times Haridwar: The income-tax department has frozen the bank accounts of the two trusts run by yoga guru Ramdev and asked the Divya Yog Mandir Trust and Patanjali Yog Mandir Trust to pay up Rs. 34 crore. The trusts, registered as charitable organisations, were enjoying tax exemptions until a few months ago. The benefits have been withdrawn. Divya Pharmacy, run by the mandir trust, manufactured medicines and was earning profit...

-Manorama Online In the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's film Rashomon, four characters have differing recollections of the same event. Did the samurai stab himself with his wife's dagger? Which of them, if any, is telling the truth? I felt like this after the session at last month's Jaipur Literature Festival during which Ashis Nandy said, among other odd things, “It is a fact that most of the corrupt come from the...

-The Hindu Caste might be cast in stone judging from the way the dominant discourse gets conducted in India “Caste is the most overwhelming factor in Indian life. Those who deny it in principle also accept it in practice. Life moves within the frontiers of caste and cultured men speak in soft tones against the system of caste, while its rejection in action just does not occur to them...” Socialist thinker Ram...