-Express News Service   Disagreeing with the parliamentary committee report on the Lokpal Bill, the BJP Friday said the legislation failed to include the citizens’ charter as well as lower bureaucracy within its ambit and that it was a clear deviation from the sense of the House that was agreed upon. Claiming it was the handiwork of a lawyer — the chairman of the committee is Congress’ Abhishek Singhvi — the BJP said...

The Trinamool Congress rode to power earlier this year on the strength of popular resentment against the acquisition of land for commercial development, but farmers in West Bengal seeking higher compensation say the party is no longer as receptive to their demands. That maybe because, while the Trinamool Congress-led state government has said it won’t acquire private property for industrial use, it is keen on creating jobs and is, therefore, allotting...

A.K. Ramanujan, while referring to the diversity and apparently contradictory element of unity in the Indian traditions, refers to an Irish joke about whether to classify trousers as singular or plural: singular from the top, plural from the bottom.1 A Concurrent Discipline Course in the University of Delhi for Second Year Honours students not doing History was introduced in 2005 on ‘Culture in India—Ancient’, and had sought to very sensitively...

Teacher running coaching centre wins appeal against M.P. Government The Supreme Court has directed the Madhya Pradesh Government to pay a compensation of Rs. 2 lakh to a teacher running a coaching centre for handcuffing and keeping him in police custody without any valid reason. A Bench of Justices Aftab Alam and Ranjana Desai, however, rejected appellant Hardeep Singh's plea for prosecution of the Jabalpur Collector and other government officials for want...

-The Hindu   At this point, when there is an overflow of emotions on the Mullaperiyar dam issue, the priority cannot be going into the merits of the arguments pressed by Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Suffice it to note that Kerala fears for the safety of the 116-year-old dam situated in Idukki district and wants a new dam to be built in its place. Tamil Nadu's stand is that the dam, which...