The return of Drinking Water and Sanitation portfolio under Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh’s wing meant that he is now in charge of three departments which he could have distributed among the three Ministers of State under him. Instead of assigning departments to each one of them, Ramesh, on the other hand, tried to keep all his three MoSs — Sisir Adhikari, Pradeep Jain and Agatha Sangma — happy by...

Lucknow, New Delhi : In April this year, Babu Singh Kushwaha resigned as Uttar Pradesh’s family welfare minister, taking moral responsibility for the scam involving misappropriation of National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) funds in the office of Lucknow’s Chief Medical Officer (CMO) — a racket that was exposed after the murder of incumbent B P Singh. The money involved was a few crores and the men arrested were a former CMO,...

The communal violence bill prepared by the National Advisory Council (NAC) seeks fundamentally to change how the government deals with violence against minorities. The bill focuses on religious and linguistic minorities as well the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, but religious minorities are at its heart. The bill has some undeniable strengths, but it suffers from two analytically fatal flaws. First, it places excessive faith in the state machinery. Though...

-The Telegraph   Digvijay Singh today once again called the Centre’s counter-Maoist policy to question, saying there was no need to ask for a review of the Supreme Court order that said the Salwa Judum vigilante force was unconstitutional and tribal youths appointed as special police officers should be disarmed. “I think there is no need for a review petition,” the Congress leader said when asked why the government was seeking a...

The land problem in Singur was a turning point in the political fortunes of both the Left Front and the Trinamul Congress. The story is far from complete, and the legal twists and turns between Mamata Banerjee and the house of Tata could unfold in surprising ways. The issue of adequate compensation for farmers, who had to part with their land, is still an open question to which many well...