-The Hindu Chennai: All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has agreed to remove the word ‘mandatory' from a controversial memo it served on 11,500 colleges it oversees for installing Microsoft Office 365. The memo set June 30 as the last date for installing the productivity suite, after the American software giant was awarded a contract last year to provide the colleges with its cloud e-mail and storage offering. Had the mandate not...

-Live Mint The failure of the UPA government to get the food security Bill passed has exposed its hypocrisy With the budget session of parliament coming to an early close amid a political logjam, the food security Bill has been stalled again. The blame for this important legislation not winning parliamentary passage in the last four years rests entirely on the Manmohan Singh government, despite its last-minute posturing. The Bill, which was cleared...

-The Economic Times The Supreme Court may have called upon the " caged parrot" Central Bureau of Investigation to free itself from the interference of the executive, but the dependence of the agency on its several masters in the government makes it easier said than done. The ministries of home, personnel, law and finance can all be construed as the masters of CBI in one way or the other, given the decisive...

-Firstpost.com It is becoming increasingly difficult to retain respect for Nobel laureate Amartya Sen. He seems to surface in the media every time the UPA government is about to legislate its pet follies, providing intellectual succour to mindless spending and corruption wrapped up in the package of anti-poverty schemes. Yesterday, Sen bobbed up just when the UPA - under siege for every known scam in India - tried to start discussions on...

-The Hindu The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked Attorney-General G.E. Vahanvati to take instructions from the government whether a law could be enacted to insulate the CBI from extraneous influence and make it an independent organisation and to ensure its functional autonomy. A three-Judge Bench comprising Justices R.M. Lodha, Madan B. Lokur and Kurian Joseph told the A-G: "we would be happy if a law is put in place before the next...