-The Economic Times   The Centre's interlocutors panel on Jammu and Kashmir has recommended setting up of a constitutional committee to review all central Acts and Articles of the Constitution extended to Jammu and Kashmir. The purpose is to determine how the application of these laws has dented the special status of J&K and curtailed the state government's powers to cater to welfare of its people.  The report of the interlocutors - Dileep...

-The Telegraph Vice-President and Rajya Sabha chairman Hamid Ansari has suggested that meetings of parliamentary standing committees should be open to public or televised live, as in many western democracies. Such panels do “excellent work” but remain unsung, Ansari said as he made the proposal at a two-day orientation programme for new entrants to the Rajya Sabha that began yesterday. He said he had discussed the issue with MPs. But some of the...

Cabinet clears change in divorce law: Women to get part of husband’s property In a move that could be a setback to land acquisition for commercial use, a parliamentary committee unanimously recommended that the government should not acquire land for industrial, commercial or for-profit enterprises or private companies. Instead, the panel, which has proposed legislation favouring landowners, recommends that private companies and public-private partnerships would have to buy land in the open...

The UPA II’s third anniversary on May 22 may witness a repackaging of old schemes, promises and achievements in the “Report to the people” as the government has little to show for 2011-12. Sources say the 13-chapter report struggles to contest the perception of policy paralysis by pointing out social-sector initiatives based primarily on welfare schemes launched during the UPA I regime or in the first year of UPA II. The government...

A parliamentary panel has cited the practice in developed countries to reject a key provision in the land acquisition bill allowing the government to acquire plots for private companies. The committee said in the US, Japan and Canada, land is purchased by private enterprises, not acquired by the state. Why should India continue this “anomalous practice”, asked the parliamentary standing committee on rural development in its report on the Land Acquisition,...