-The Times of India Fireworks can be expected from a crucial meeting to be held on Wednesday after Arvind Kejriwal-led India Against Corruption (IAC) said that 76% of people surveyed were in favour of the activists forming a political party. This comes even as social crusader Anna Hazare has opposed forming a political party and also distanced himself from IAC. The results were published a day after Hazare, who will be reaching...

-The Telegraph All environment-related roadblocks relating to government projects will be handled by the Prime Minister’s Office, finance minister P. Chidambaram has told a review meeting of infrastructure projects. His remark suggested the government is in a hurry to complete all infrastructure projects in time for the Elections. Environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan and her team appeared to be everyone’s favourite punching bag at the meeting, attended by all core infrastructure ministries, including those...

-First Post A lot has been written in recent weeks about crony capitalism, but an important issue for the media to introspect over is this: can this happen without significant amounts of crony journalism? When media companies begin to think they can run coal plants, surely this compromises them (Lokmat Group, DB Corp). When political parties think they ought to own media houses or be aligned to one (YSR Congress’ Sakshi, the...

-Live Mint/ The Wall Street Journal Contributions more than doubled between 2004 and 2009 polls; experts say published figures just tip of the iceberg  Contributions, including money from top companies, to the country’s two largest political parties, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), more than doubled between the 2004 and 2009 general Elections. This revelation affirms a trend of companies, most of which are listed, opting for a transparent route to...

-The Business Standard Make politicians' asset disclosures clearer, and follow up In an important move towards transparency, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last year reminded his council of ministers to declare their assets, movable and immovable, and said that the declarations would be put up online. Declarations for 2012 are now online and these should be welcome. But they also reveal that many lacunae remain in terms of full and clear disclosure. The...