While discussing the question of including the higher judiciary under the proposed anti-corruption Lokpal Bill, government representatives on the joint draft committee on Saturday pointed out that two former Chief Justices, M.N. Venkatachaliah and J.S. Verma, had opined in a public consultation that the higher judiciary should be kept out of the ambit of the bill. Members of the civil society cited instances where applications to look into charges of corruption...

Webcasting is the newest technology the state election department adopted for the 2011 Assembly polls. In fact, Bengal is the second state in the country, after Bihar, where the webcasting technology is being used for the Elections. The technology enables live feeding of recordings of the inside of booths through internet connection. Live recording of voting procedure is thus directly loaded and can be seen by officers at the state election...

Senior United Nations officials today stressed the need to promote the participation of women in decision-making, noting that democracy and gender equality are interlinked and mutually reinforcing. “While women’s political participation improves democracy, the reverse is also true: democracy is an incubator for gender equality,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in his remarks at a roundtable held at UN Headquarters on gender equality and democracy. “It provides public space for discussion of human...

The Supreme Court hopes the intractable land disputes of Singur and Nandigram will get resolved after the Bengal Elections. “Wait until the Elections,” Justices R.V. Raveendran and A.K. Patnaik said today, giving a July hearing date on a slew of petitions demanding the land acquired for the Tata Motors plant in Singur be returned to farmers. “We may not have the problem then (after the Elections),” Justice Raveendran, the senior judge on...

The government plans to hike diesel prices by up to Rs 3 a litre soon after the assembly Elections in five states are over next week, while an equivalent steep increase in petrol rates is also on card. "An Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) headed by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee is scheduled to meet on May 11 to mull on a hike in diesel prices," a top government official, refusing to...