A minister will now be able to take his or her friend, companion or relative on flights free of cost. A bill introduced today in the Lok Sabha seeks to extend this facility of free air travel, earlier restricted to family members, to companions or relatives of ministers. The Salaries and Allowances of Ministers (Amendment) Bill, introduced by home minister P. Chidambaram, allows ministers to take along “any number of companions...

Unrelenting protests against price rise by a united Opposition forced the adjournment of the Lok Sabha today after MPs accusing the government of inaction disrupted scheduled discussions. MPs from all non-UPA parties, including the Left, BJP, Samajwadi Party, Janata Dal (United), Biju Janata Dal, Akali Dal and the Shiv Sena, started raising slogans against the government in the House. Opposition MPs also marched in front of Parliament House — inside the complex...

A formal move to consider the removal of a sitting judge is extremely rare. In 1991, impeachment proceedings began against Justice V Ramaswami, but were later dropped due to lack of support in Parliament. More recently, a judge of the Calcutta high court is facing impeachment. Now, 76 Rajya Sabha MPs - all from the opposition ranks - have put their signature to a petition seeking the removal of Karnataka...

Rajasthan had emerged as a model for transparency and accountability in NREGS implementation. Tragically, entrenched interests have been allowed to hijack the process.  Through the second half of October and for most of November this year, Rajasthan was engulfed in an unusual form of protest, spearheaded in the main by gram panchayat officials. Joined in some places by elected MLAs and MPs, and backed covertly by a section of District...

The government appears to have taken a final call going into the climate change summit at Copenhagen that India’s traditional stand, that developing countries are not obliged to cut emissions, is unlikely to change. Yet there remains considerable wiggle room available to India’s negotiators. The temptation, however, to keep that wiggle room as large as possible, at the cost of atmospherics going in, must be avoided. The government for a...