The Centre today took the extraordinary step of advising media to be “responsible” and not to “demonise” a different point of view, reflecting an assessment that the prevailing sense of drift was severely affecting legislative and administrative processes. Three senior CABinet ministers — Salman Khurshid (law), Kapil Sibal (telecom) and Ambika Soni (information and broadcasting) — appealed to the media to put things in perspective instead of sensationalising every issue without...

Jairam Ramesh's removal as Environment Minister creates uncertainties for domestic environment policy and the deadlocked global climate talks. WHATEVER one may think of its overall impact, the recent CABinet reshuffle was not exactly a damp squib. Its single most important component was Jairam Ramesh's replacement as the Minister of State with independent charge in the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) by Jayanthi Natarajan, a relative political lightweight with very little...

The Supreme Court has converted a high-powered committee of the Government of India, on the issue of black money, into an SIT under its own direction. This is an expression of no-confidence in the executive. The government’s intention in tackling either the problem of black economy or bringing back the black savings stashed abroad is suspect. According to reports, the money stashed abroad by the corrupt businessmen, politicians and others...

-IANS   The draft National Food Security Bill, which has been approved by the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM), has scant regard for children and does not assure their right to food security, activists of the Right to Food campaign said Monday. "It appears that the government does not consider the specific issues related to the food security of children, who form about 40 percent of the population, or the vast problem...

The Supreme Court will pronounce its verdict on Tuesday on a batch of appeals filed by the Tamil Nadu government and others against a Madras High Court order declaring as unconstitutional the amended law to defer implementation of the Uniform System of School Education (USSE) this year. A three-judge Bench of Justices J.M. Panchal, Deepak Verma and B.S. Chauhan had reserved verdict on August 4 after marathon arguments for six days....