Company consistently violated tenets of Cement Wage Board Award ACC says it is studying the court ruling and examining options Every evening about 500 workers shrug off the exhaustion of an eight-hour shift to protest outside the premises of ACC Ltd.'s Jamul cement factory in Durg, Chhattisgarh. Closed fists swing rhythmically to chants of “Inqilab zindabad,” as factory veterans who have been protesting for 20 years stand beside young men with little...

The Lokpal (ombudsman) Bill would help fight corruption only at the centre and not in states where the magnitude of graft is alarming, cautions former Supreme Court judge Justice N. Santosh Hegde amid the escalating hype over the proposed legislation. Hegde, also the ombudsman for Karnataka, is part of the 10-member committee set up by the government to draft the new bill following the hunger strike by reformer Anna Hazare that...

Enforcement Directorate has begun attaching Madhu Koda and his friends’ properties, mostly flats and land in Bihar, Jharkhand and Maharashtra, valued at over Rs 300 crore. Armed with an April 6 approval order from the adjudicating authority for cases under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), the directorate is sticking to the higher valuation even though 2007 revenue department assessments pegged the properties’ worth at around Rs 130 crore. “This is...

A survey by the West Midnapore administration has found that over two lakh voters, three fourths of them in Maoist-affected areas, are afraid of voting. District officials said the survey of nearly five lakh people to identify “vulnerable voters” had been carried out following instructions from the Election Commission. “As West Midnapore has the largest Maoist-affected area in the state, the commission had asked us to find out about the fear factor...

The idea of the first Jan Lokpal Bill dates back to as early as 1969, yet this democratic bill was always denied by the pseudo democratic government of India for the last 42 years. None of the Lokpal bills introduced again and again in 1971, 1977, 1985, 1989, 1996, 1998, 2001, 2005 and 2008 passed the approval nod of our great Indian leaders simply because it threatened the supreme powers...