-The Telegraph A senior IAS officer was arrested today for alleged involvement in the Emaar MGF scandal dating back to Y.S.R. Reddy’s tenure as Andhra chief minister. B.P. Acharya, now principal secretary in the home department, is the second senior IAS officer based in the state to be held on corruption charges in recent months. Y. Srilakshmi was held in an illegal Mining case involving former Karnataka minister G. Janardhana Reddy. Acharya was managing...

The Supreme Court-appointed committee investigating illegal iron ore Mining in Karnataka is tying up loose ends in Bellary district and will be submitting its final report early next month. The court's forest bench is to hear the case again on February 3.  The Central Empowered Committee (CEC), whose investigations prompted the Supreme Court to suspend Mining in iron ore-rich areas of the state, affecting nearly a fourth of the country's production,...

-The Hindu   Samajika Parivarthana Janandolana (SPJ) and Campaign Against Child Labour (CACL), Karnataka, have appealed to Chief Minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda to rethink the appointment of IAS officer E. Shivalingamurthy to the post of the Director of Women and Child Welfare Department. An appeal In a letter addressed to the Chief Minister, SPJ State organiser Y. Mariswamy has said Mr. Shivalingamurthy is one of the three IAS officers against whom a high-level committee,...

-The Times of India   The Karnataka high court on Friday allowed investigation against external affairs minister SM Krishna and JD(S) leader HD Kumaraswamy responding to a private complaint about illegal Mining. Partly allowing their petitions seeking the quashing of the complaint, Justice N Ananda ordered the continuation of Lokayukta investigations in respect of Krishna dereserving forest land for Mining and Kumaraswamy favouring a firm. The judge observed: "The dereservation was in contravention of...

-The Economic Times   Bureaucracy bashing is India's favourite national vocation. And for good reason. Our bureaucracy has its good share of crooks, criminals and cheats who need to be put away - with or without a Lokpal. The simple counter-question is, does the bureaucracy have a disproportionately larger share of crooks than in other professions in India, and the data clearly does not say a resounding yes.  In fact, there is perhaps...