The government introduced a retrospective clarification to the Income-Tax (I-T) Act, 1961, virtually amending the law to ensure that cross-border transactions such as the $11.08 billion (around Rs55,735 crore today) Vodafone-Hutchison deal are taxable. The Supreme Court had ruled this deal as not being taxable in India. The amendment becomes crucial because a review petition by the government on this case is pending before the Supreme Court, which might now have...

Ten years after the killings in Gujarat, Narendra Modi has neither expressed regret nor has he been held accountable for those mass deaths. Where do we go from here? Anand Teltumbde (tanandraj@gmail.com) is a writer and civil rights activist with the Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights, Mumbai.   Just thinking of it, a shiver runs down my spine. I had my own brush with how the Hindutva gangs carried out the...

-The Times of India The Supreme Court on Monday issued notices to 6 Andhra Pradesh ministers and 8 IAS officers on a plea alleging that the CBI was not proceeding against them despite having sufficient evidence that they helped former Congress leader Y Jaganmohan Reddy accumulate massive illegal assets. A bench headed by Justice Dalveer Bhandari issued the notices to the ministers and the IAS officers and sought their stands on the...

-The Telegraph A group of eminent individuals has written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asking him to initiate a “truly inclusive process of deliberation” to help formulate a rational public policy on nuclear power and genetically modified (GM) crops. Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, a former Supreme Court judge, and 16 others, including former scientists and administrators, have also questioned Singh’s remarks to a US journal last month suggesting that foreign non-government organisations...

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has once again cold-shouldered the Centre’s overtures to win the Trinamool Congress’ support for the National Food Security Bill. Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, K V Thomas, visited Kolkata on Friday, but returned without meeting Banerjee. Though Thomas’ office had written to Banerjee to propose the meeting to allay concerns of the Bengal government over the bill, it...