-The Hindu Dalit groups here have demanded an additional budget allocation for the Scheduled Caste Sub-Plan this year to compensate for the loss of Rs.8,685.04 crore caused by “inadequate provisions” made in the State budgets during the past five successive years. The allocation should be made in proportion to the population of Dalits enumerated in the 2011 Census. A delegation of Dalit activists met Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot here with the request...

-The Indian Express CBI director Amar Pratap Singh declared today that “if the king is immoral, so will be his subjects”, and sought “ethics in governance” while addressing an Interpol anti-corruption programme. In a hint at scams involving ministers, Singh said: “I am prompted to recall a famous verse from ancient Indian scriptures, which says ‘Yatha raja tatha praja’.” Singh said $ 500 billion (nearly Rs 24 lakh crore) had been stashed away...

-The Times of India   Petitions seeking the inclusion of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and National Investigation Agency (NIA) under the Right to Information Act, have to be Transferred to theSupreme Court to be heard along with other petitions raising similar demands, CBI told the high court on Wednesday.  When the case came up for hearing before actingChief Justice Manjula Chellur and Justice PR Ramachandra Menon, CBI's counsel submitted to the court...

The recommendations of the Planning Commission’s High Level Expert Group on Access to Universal Healthcare are significant because they make explicit the need to contextualise health within the rights. However, the problem with the report is that it does not ask why many of the same recommendations that were made by previous committees have not been implemented. The HLEG neither recognises the problems, constraints and compulsions at the national, state...

In the past week the media has been reporting that the SIT has filed a closure report that gives a “clean chit” to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi on the grounds that there is no prosecutable evidence against him. However, Tehelka has now scooped amicus curiae Raju Ramachandran’s explosive confidential report that had told the Supreme Court that Modi should be chargesheeted and prosecuted for serious criminal offences like promoting religious...