-The Indian Express But parties can be made to disclose their finances compulsorily We have received a number of inquiries about the CPI's position on bringing parties under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. The decision of the Central Information Commission (CIC) that political parties should come under the RTI, as they receive a substantial amount of financial help from the government, has been rejected by all parties. Many eyebrows were raised...

-The Business Standard Chhattisgarh Food Security Bill was passed on Dec 21, 2012. Under the Act, about 90% of the state's population will have PDS entitlements Raipur: In December 2007, when Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh announced no one would die of starvation, not many realised the state was going to create history. The announcement came from the sleepy village of Sonakhan in Mahasamund district, where in 1856, the landlord of the area,...

-The United Nations Without fresh ideas to address rapid urbanization, the number of people living in slums lacking access to basic infrastructure and services such as sanitation, electricity, and health care may skyrocket from one billion at present to three billion by 2050, the United Nations today reported. That wake up call is one of several alarm bells sounded in the UN World Economic and Social Survey 2013, which was launched today...

-PTI Dehradun: The blame game over Uttarakhand deluge escalated on Sunday with the Meteorological department saying it had issued "timely" warnings of heavy rains and landslides but the state government claimed these were not "specific". The assertions by the MeT department and the state government, two weeks after heavy rains triggered floods and landslides that ravaged Uttarakhand, came amid questions whether the administration ignored the warnings and whether large-scale deaths in the...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Terming some of the answers provided by Walmart as "incomprehensible" and parts of the deposition by its just departed India boss Raj Jain as "ambiguous", a government committee set up to look into whether the US behemoth indulged in bribery in India, has refused to give it a clean chit, complicating its efforts to draw a line under the episode. The one-man committee under Justice Mukul Mudgal...