The 1985 Lokpal Bill destroyed the raison d'etre of the institution of an ombudsman, but all successive governments copied it. PUBLIC anger was understandably aroused over the gross delay by Parliament in the last 40 years to enact a Lokpal Bill and with the toothless one that the government sponsored. It is not widely known that the delay was aggravated by deception and fraud in 1985. It was, however, emulated by...

The Supreme Court today refused to go into a batch of PILs challenging constitutional validity of the notification on composition of a committee to draft the Jan Lokpal bill, saying the petitions were "premature". A bench headed by Chief Justice S H Kapadia posted the matter for hearing in July. The bench said, "The petitions are premature and can't be taken as the Lokpal Bill was yet to be passed." "It is still...

Do you know that the highest number of corruption cases are registered in Maharashtra (4566) and the lowest in West Bengal (only 9) between 2000 and 2009? Do you also want to know how much property has been recovered from the corrupt in different states of India in the past ten years? But how does one systematically track corruption? How to get details of the number of cases going on...

Three pronouncements made on three consecutive days this month by the Supreme Court of India have brought relief to different groups of economically and socially deprived people. The beneficiaries include children sold out by poor parents to work in circuses as child labour; young men and women determined to get married crossing caste barriers and harassed for that very reason by ‘khap panchayats'; and the hungry poor across the country...

Directs Centre to frame rehabilitation scheme for rescued children ‘Issue suitable notifications within two months to prohibit employment of children in circuses' Instances of children being forcefully detained, sometimes under extreme inhuman conditions The Supreme Court on Monday banned the employment of children in circuses and directed the Union government to take immediate steps to rescue those engaged in such employment. A Bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and A.K. Patnaik, passing orders on a...