-The Telegraph   A Comptroller & Auditor General’s report, tabled in the Assembly today, has pulled up the state for poor implementation of a central government scheme for rural roads, pointing to substandard work, fraudulent payments to unscrupulous contractors and serious financial irregularities. Only nine per cent of rural habitations were connected with all weather roads under Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) between 2005 and 2010, the five years that saw three...

Congress negotiators and Anna Hazare's associates repeatedly shifted the goalposts through the four-and-half-month stand-off on the shape and structure of the Lokpal Bill. The Anna group flagged as many as 40 issues during the many rounds of discussions in the joint Lokpal drafting committee set up after Mr. Hazare ended his April 2011 fast in Jantar Mantar here. Of these, 34 were more or less resolved by the time negotiations broke...

The apex court upholds an order allowing students to inspect their answer sheets but makes discomfiting observations on the scope of the RTI Act. IN 2008, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) rejected an application filed by a candidate under the Right to Information Act for the inspection and re-evaluation of his Secondary School Examination answer books. The reason cited was that the CBSE shared a fiduciary relationship with...

Anna Hazare is not Mohandas Gandhi or Jayaprakash Narayan. No one wants to seriously hear his diagnosis of the ills of the Indian political system or his vision of a future India and, so, it is pointless to find fault with either. He is not even a Gandhian satyagrahi looking for self-purification or waiting to listen to his inner voice. He has used his fasts to unashamedly pressure a corrupt,...

Mother Teresa's path was a unique one. While she never deviated from her faith, she reached out to millions of her special constituency, the deprived and the dying, recognising their faces to be the face of her God. A few weeks ago I visited one of Mother Teresa's Sisters who was admitted for surgery in the PGI hospital in Chandigarh. Haryana Chief Secretary Urvashi Gulati and the Principal Secretary to the...