-PTI Senior IAS officers Pradeep Vyas and Jairaj Phatak have been placed under suspension pending investigation in the Adarsh Housing Society scam, Maharashtra government informed the Bombay high court on Thursday. While Vyas was the collector of Mumbai, Phatak was city municipal commissioner when the scam took place. According to the CBI, Vyas (49), during his tenure as Collector from August 2002 to May 2005, allegedly connived with other accused and...

-The Times of India A conspiracy to dilute charges against accused persons in the Adarsh Housing Society scam by CBI lawyers has been unearthed with the arrest of special public prosecutor Mandar Goswamy, CBI counsel in Mumbai high court in Adarsh and other cases, income tax lawyer J K Jagiasi, former Congress MLC Kanhaiya Lal Gidwani (accused in the Adarsh scam) and his son Kailash.  The accused lawyers reportedly took Rs 1.25...

The government, the largest owner of landed property in the country, is preparing a comprehensive land sale policy to raise revenues and check corruption in government-owned property deals. The finance ministry will shortly move a cabinet note for bringing in a new uniform policy on 'land alienation' by government agencies, with an eye on removing discretionary powers of individual ministers and bureaucrats, said a government official. In big cities, large tracts...

Farmers in Maharashtra flock to 
a new breed of aggressive leaders Its name in Marathi means edge of the hill, but Dongarkada has no hill or mountain in its vicinity. What the village in Maharashtra's Hingoli district has is a cooperative sugar factory controlled by Congress leader Ashok Chavan. Though the Adarsh Housing Society scam rocked the state and forced him to resign as chief minister, the village remains loyal to...

Though Anna Hazare gets much of the credit for focusing the national spotlight on corruption, India was only too aware of the problem even before his agitation. According to a Pew Research poll in October 2010 (six months before Hazare emerged on the national scene), 98 per cent of Indians indicate corrupt political leaders as a “very big” or a “moderately big” problem. Hazare’s campaign did not attune Indians to...