-The Hindu Manoharpur (Jharkhand): Deep inside the Saranda sal forest, Thalkobad lies at the core of what was a CPI (Maoist) "liberated zone" in Jharkhand's West Singhbhum district along the Odisha border. Thalkobad, along with 24 other villages, was reclaimed by the Indian state after a massive military operation - Operation Anaconda-I in August 2011 to destroy the CPI (Maoist) Eastern Regional Bureau and several training camps inside Saranda. The village...

-The Hindu   Supersession only in exceptional circumstances, not for extraneous considerations The Supreme Court on Thursday decried the tendency of State governments superseding elected cooperative societies for political or extraneous reasons. "Supersession of an elected managing committee/board is an exception and [can] be resorted to only in exceptional circumstances," said a Bench of Justices K.S. Radhakrishnan and Dipak Misra. Sending a warning to the States, the Bench imposed Rs. 1 lakh in costs...

-Frontline Corruption tends to be greater in periods when there is a state-engineered redistribution of wealth in favour of a few at the explicit or implicit expense of the many. Liberalisation is one such period. IT cannot be verified and may not be true. But, the view that the record of graft and corruption during the two-term, nine-year rule of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) is the worst in India's post-Independence...

-The Economic Times The CBI manual contradicts the government's stance that it did no wrong in vetting the draft status report of the agency's probe in the coal allocation case, say legal experts, former CBI officials and activists. The manual says while CBI's superintendence is vested in the central government, its supervising authority is the Central Vigilance Commission in case of investigation of offences alleged to have been committed under the...

-The Hindu Business Line Chit funds, one of India's oldest indigenous financial institutions, are regulated by the Chit Funds Act, 1982, a central statute, and various State-specific regulations. Further, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) regulates the operation of ‘collective investment schemes' (Collective Investment Schemes) through the SEBI 1999 Regulations (CIS Regulations). However, Section 11 AA of the Securities and Exchange Board of India Act, 1992 specifically excludes a...