-The Indian Express   Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee was simply stating the obvious on Sunday when he said, “Parliament is supreme.” Neither did he depart from a common understanding of the scheme of things under our Constitution when he clarified that it is Parliament’s right to decide on legislation and nobody else can presume to lay down deadlines for bills to be passed. Yet, such had been the abdication of argument...

As the Lokpal Bill gets mired in a tortuous birthing, the debate shifts to who exactly has the right to pass a law Why Politicians Hate Civil Society     * Unelected activists stealing Parliament’s right to make laws, undercutting role of parliamentarians     * Demands like an all-powerful Lokpal directly impact political-bureaucratic class and the status quo     * Rigid deadlines, fasts unto death to press home issues are akin to holding government...

Fifty-five days after three top executives of his company were sent to jail in the 2G spectrum scam, Anil Ambani, chairman of Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group ( ADAG), paid them a visit at the Tihar jail complex on Wednesday. The move comes on a day when Anil Ambani's role has come under fresh scrutiny, with the CBI informing that the joint parliamentary committee it is still examining ADAG's role in...

-The Telegraph   The talks to draft the Lok Pal bill appeared to have hit a wall after the civil society members stayed away from today’s meeting and left the field open for the government to raise the issue of civility. The government, whose representatives went ahead with the meeting, asked the Anna Hazare-led group not to derail proceedings by “raising extraneous issues” and publicly abusing ministers. “We have been called cheats, frauds,...

Sheikh Sajed Ali doesn’t dare leave the Jamshed Ali Bhawan party office in West Midnapore’s Keshpur. It’s the only refuge the sharecropper has been able to find since the Left Front led by the Communist Party of India-Marxist, or CPM, got wiped out in the recent assembly elections by the Trinamool Congress and its allies. Ali is terrified to venture out. He says his family is being asked to pay `2...