C & D staff will also come under watchdog Refusing to be cowed down by pressure exerted by Team Anna, the government stood its ground on maintaining the investigative independence of the Central Bureau of Investigation, as the Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, cleared the draft of the controversial Lokpal Bill late on Tuesday evening. It is now likely to be tabled in the Lok Sabha on Thursday. The...

-PTI Under the proposals, the Prime Minister will be under the purview of the Lokpal with certain safeguards that will keep out aspects like international relations, public order, atomic Energy, space, internal and external security from the inquiry. Probe on any complaint against the Prime Minister will be decided by the full bench, of which at least three-fourth should agree. The probe will in-camera and if a complaint is dismissed, the records on...

‘Make use of renewable sources mandatory for power generation' Parliamentarians have sought Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's intervention in reining in mobile operators from misusing subsidised diesel for running mobile towers, which were causing massive environmental pollution. They have urged Dr. Singh to ensure that strong provisions are incorporated in the National Telecom Policy, 2011, currently being finalised, making it mandatory for the use of renewable sources and technologies for power generation to...

It will provide credit risk guarantee to banks on the loans Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday announced that the Centre was considering setting up a credit risk guarantee fund with a corpus of Rs. 1,000 crore, to start with, to encourage banks to lend to the poor for housing. Emphasising that developing housing for the poor was critical for sustainable urban development, he said: “To encourage banks to lend in significant...

Dumps trickle into the rivers and occasionally collapse, flooding homes and fields with muddy water The reddish hills dot large tracts of the Goan landscape—mounds of waste soil and other debris that have been left behind after iron ore was dug out from some 95 mines. Accumulating since the 1960s, the dumps, as they are known, are estimated at 750 million tonnes (mt) and consist of top soil, mud and iron...