-The Indian Express From barring independent candidates from contesting elections to making it mandatory for corporates to seek shareholders' approval at their annual general meetings before donating funds to political parties, the Law Commission of India is set to recommend sweeping electoral reforms in its 255th report which will be submitted to the government on Thursday. Sources in the commission told The Indian Express that the panel has also opposed compulsory voting....

-The Hindu Common Cause, the NGO whose PIL plea led to the cancellation of coal block allocations, moved the Supreme Court on Wednesday accusing Aditya Birla group of hawala transactions, money laundering and bribery and sought a CBI and Enforcement Directorate probe. The application filed by advocate Prashant Bhushan for the NGO cited how coal extracted from a captive block allocated to the Sasan ultra mega Power project was allowed to be...

-The Indian Express   New Delhi: Told to "place the correct picture" before the Supreme Court on the "critical need" for hydel projects in Uttarakhand, the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) first contradicted the recommendations of its own panel, which ruled against six hydel projects, and is now unable to submit it in writing to the court. The ministry, which was asked by the Supreme Court on December 16 to examine the...

-The Hindu Nine amendments have been adopted. The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Amendment) Bill, 2015, popularly known as the land bill, was adopted by the Lok Sabha after debating it for two days. Congress and Biju Janata Dal walked out ahead of the voting, to protest the removal of a clause that makes it mandatory to get farmers' consent prior to the acquisition of land...

-Business Standard Amendments skip key controversial issues The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has made nine amendments to its land Bill, tabled in Parliament on Monday. Most of these were cosmetic in nature, leaving the key elements of the original promulgation intact - the lack of need for consent and social impact assessment while acquiring land for private projects; public-private partnerships and government acquisitions. Rural Development Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh did move two amendments...