-The Hindu Mandya: In a single biggest raid in recent years against the "bonded labour system" in the State, Revenue and Police officials on Thursday raided a stone quarry unit on the outskirts of Bangalore and rescued 19 migrant labourers. Among them nine are minors. The rescued labourers are from Mahbubnagar district in Andhra Pradesh. They alleged that they had been working since past 13 years as bonded labourers at the quarry,...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Come July and our babus will be back in school. The Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) will begin an e-governance training module called the e-Governance Executive Training Programme (eGEP). This is the first such national-level programme for officers at the level of under secretary, section officer, deputy director, assistant director, tehsil and block level officer or equivalent. They will be nominated by their department...

-The Hindustan Times Kolkata: Probing the infamous Saradha scam for Bengal's investigating agencies is like searching for the man who stole overcoats in Nikolai Gogol's The Overcoat. It is a mammoth task made more difficult due to the involvement of political bigwigs. The enormity of the challenge is manifold. First, the web of financial irregularities amounting to thousands of crores of rupees. Second, the involvement of politicians in the scam and third,...

-The Hindu     While the legitimacy of political parties depends on their acceptance of financial transparency under the RTI Act, their internal decision-making processes should be left alone The Central Information Commission (CIC) decision declaring political parties as public authorities under the Right to Information Act has again pit the political class against the people. Political parties have increasingly lost legitimacy due to opaque financing, cultivation of individuals with a criminal background, subversion of...

-The Times of India LUCKNOW: Breaking ranks with the other parties, the Samajwadi Party on Thursday said it favoured a mechanism of checks and balances for transparency in the functioning of the political parties. The SP was referring to the June 3, 2013, ruling of the chief information commissioner (CIC) that says political parties come under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. Almost all national parties have opposed the CIC ruling. National...