Two sets of government data on UPA government's most famous flagship programme Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), for which Rs. 33000 crore was earmarked in 2012-13 budget, provide widely different figures for several states, a feature which experts say is indicative of the Corruption in the scheme and weakness of social audit or accountability. The government has increasingly relied on Management Information System (MIS) for monitoring NREGA at...

-The Economic Times The trail of those who leaked the Niira Radia tapes could have been lost forever had not the Supreme Court decided to keep a copy with itself. The Centre on Thursday informed the Supreme Court that it has destroyed the entire Radia tapes, publication of excerpts from which threw the spotlight on ways of doing business as well as the tendency of security agencies to violate privacy of...

-The Hindu There is at last some clarity on the politics of the anti-Corruption movements. Baba Ramdev’s dramatic call for Congress- hatao and the ‘political turn’ of the Anna movement have confirmed that a movement aimed at rooting out Corruption cannot defer a direct encounter with party politics for very long. The manner in which both decisions were announced left something to be desired. The announcement by ‘Team Anna’ invited serious...

-IANS The service records of Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) Vinod Rai "are not traceable", the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) has revealed in response to a Right to Information (RTI) application. Lucknow activist Arvind Shukla had filed the RTI application last month, seeking details about the most powerful accountant of the country, who has gained renown as a vigilant anti-Corruption watchdog and who is once again in the spotlight after...

-The Hindustan Times Indira Gandhi National Open University, India’s largest distance learning varsity, allowed over a dozen private firms to offer its degrees and diplomas, violating rules and costing the public exchequer over Rs. 300 crores. The CBI is set to probe a series of MoUs signed by IGNOU under its former Vice Chancellor VN Rajasekharan Pillai with private firms that earned crores offering IGNOU degrees between 2006 and 2011, agency sources said.   Pillai,...