The government has removed from a proposed bill a clause that would have made builders liable to be jailed for making false promises about houses to customers, housing ministry sources have said. The initial draft of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Bill, which is awaiting cabinet clearance, provided for a jail term of up to three years as well as a compensation of up to 10 per cent of the...

-Economic and Political Weekly   The Reliance/Network18 deal should make us wake up to the impending threat to media plurality. Few are discussing it. India has just seen one of the biggest media deals, where the country’s leading industrial and business giant has bought into the largest network of news and current affairs TV channels. Yet, the fact that this could mark the beginning of a trend leading to private media being controlled...

-PTI Issues concerning the regulation and development of real estate were discussed today by the government with various stakeholders including representatives of state governments, industry associations, consumer welfare groups, and technical and legal experts.  The Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, headed by Kumari Selja, held consultations here with stakeholders on Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Bill, 2011 on which the government had invited suggestions from the public a few months...

The newly appointed Chairman of the Press Council of India (PCI) and an eminent former judge of the Supreme Court Justice Markandey Katju now faces a somewhat Hamletian dilemma — how best to suit his actions to his words. And, in the process, how best to also diffuse the heated debate and controversy that has followed some of his recent remarks on the state and the functioning of Indian media. Interestingly,...

-The Hindu   Justice Markandey Katju, Chairman, Press Council of India, has issued the following clarification on his critical observations of the Indian media.   I have expressed my views relating to the media in several T.V. interviews I gave as well as in my articles in some newspapers. However, many people, including many media people, wanted clarification and amplification of some of the issues I had raised. Many media people (including several T.V. channels)...