-The Indian Express Petroleum Minister Veerappa Moily on Thursday refuted Arvind Kejriwal’s accusations of the UPA government favouring Reliance Industries Ltd saying that the decisions were taken objectively “without fear or favour” and assured that his ministry would continue to uphold transparency. “The ministry is committed to upholding the rule of law and decisions are taken objectively without any fear or favour. The system is not influenced or guided by whims and...

-DNA The central government is contemplating extending the Right to Education (RTE) till class 10. Presently, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act covers up to class 8: Children up to the age of 14 years are eligible to get free and compulsory education till class 8 in any school. The Centre now wants to extend free education for two more years. The pros and cons of such a move...

-PTI The Union CABinet on Thursday decided to withdraw controversial draft amendments to the Right to Information Act that had sought to restrict disclosure of file notings only to social and developmental issues. After this, all file notings can be made public except those explicitly exempted, such as the ones related to national security, privacy and protection of commercial interest. “The CABinet has decided to withdraw the amendments,” said a source privy to...

-The Indian Express More than six years after it gave the go-ahead to amend the RTI Act, 2005 to, among other things, exclude public notings on files by officials from being accessed under the transparency law, the CABinet is expected to withdraw the move when it meets on Thursday. Sources told The Indian Express that the decision comes after UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi indicated to the government her opposition to the proposed...

-Outlook The Delhi Government today slammed municipal bodies for "failing" to contain spurt in dengue cases which inched close to 1,000 and directed them to take "urgent" steps before the situation goes out of control. A meeting of Delhi CABinet, presided over by Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, expressed "grave concern" over rising dengue cases and told municipal bodies to "pull up their socks" to avoid the worst. "The entire CABinet was of the...