The Centre is likely to send a team of experts to Jharkhand to monitor the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) that it believes has been taken over by a contractors’ mafia allegedly behind recent murders of an activist and labourer associated with the job scheme. In an exclusive interview to The Telegraph, Union secretary for rural development B.K. Sinha refused to give out names, but insisted that the...
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Centre decrees: CBI will probe any NREGS fraud by Maulshree Seth
In a move likely to raise the hackles of states, the Union Ministry of Rural Development has decided that all criminal offences in the implementation of the NREGA would in future be investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), whenever the state government fails to take satisfactory action. In a circular sent to all states on Thursday, the ministry said that in cases of system failures or non-criminal lapses, a...
More »Supreme Court asks CBI to submit report on Nandigram firing by J Venkatesan
The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the Central Bureau of Investigation to submit its report on the Nandigram firing in West Bengal to enable it to consider whether to permit the agency to go ahead with its plea to prosecute the erring police officials. A Bench of Justices R.V. Raveendran and A.K. Patnaik was hearing a batch of petitions filed by the State, the CBI, the National Human Rights Commission and...
More »Honesty is indivisible by Arun Kumar
Illegality in India today touches almost every economic activity. It is both systemic and systematic. The Indian ruling class faced its severest crisis of credibility in 2010. Its past caught up with it and skeletons and scams were spilling out of its closets. The scams have a symbiotic relationship with the black economy. The number of scams is growing and so is the size of the black economy, which has reached...
More »The official lokpal bill makes a false promise by Manoj Mitta
Besieged as it is by a spate of scams, the Centre has revived the 40-year-old proposal of setting up a national ombudsman called the Lokpal to probe political corruption. But, far from overcoming the existing deficiencies, the latest draft Bill – which could be promulgated any time soon as an ordinance - provides a legal veneer to them so that crooked politicians will continue to enjoy almost as much impunity...
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