-The Business Standard   The rural development ministry is unlikely to accept a proposal by the National Advisory Council (NAC) for a single Bill on land acquisition and relief and rehabilitation. At present, there are two bills — the Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill, 2009, and Resettlement and Rehabilitation Bill, 2009 — for the two processes. Officials say the government is committed to bringing in a legislation governing land acquisition in the monsoon...

Gearing for the challenge of implementing the proposed Food Security Bill, Union Minister of State for Food and Public Distribution K.V. Thomas has decided to hold a conference of Chief Ministers to seek their views and cooperation. Mr. Thomas toldThe Hindu that he had made a presentation of the proposed Bill to Defence Minister A.K. Antony, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar and Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh...

After land acquisition and food security, the National Advisory Council (NAC) has set its sights farther, this time to monitor programme implementation at panchayats. The council led by Congress president Sonia Gandhi feels the ministry of statistics and programme implementation is not doing enough to monitor the panchayat programmes, while panchayati raj ministry has little say since most programmes are out of its purview. Monitoring panchayats would be part of an...

This paper was presented at the Regional Workshop on War on Terror and Asian Democracy 17 May 2011, Kim Dae-Jung Convention Centre, South Korea organised by Solidarity for Democratization Movement in Asia (SDMA) Introduction In the discourse on terrorism and counter terrorism, September 11 stands as a watershed because of the attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001. Government of India (GoI) also took full advantage of the ‘War on Terror’...

Government, civil society to present separate Bills In the absence of any convergence of opinion on fundamental issues, government representatives and civil society members decided on Wednesday to conclude the deliberations and present their separate Bills on the structure and provisions of the Lokpal to the Union government. Emerging from the seventh meeting of the Joint Drafting Committee on the Lokpal Bill, the two sides admitted to fundamental differences on crucial...