Former NDA minister Arun Shourie has said he was replaced as a lead speaker in a budget debate over fears that he would oppose a proposal that may have benefited Mukesh Ambani, bring the BJP under glare at a time the party has been targeting the Congress on corruption. The statement also reflects how much Shourie and the BJP have drifted apart since the dramatic events triggered by the party’s defeat...

Advocates of liberalisation argue that by reducing state intervention and increasing transparency economic reform reduces corruption. Recent allegations of corruption suggest that this may not be true. In a season for scandal, allegations of large scale corruption have captured political India's attention. The instances to which such allegations relate are many, varying from the sale of 2G spectrum and the mobilisation and/or disposal of land and mining resources to purchases made...

Jharkhand embarked on its first panchayat polls in three decades on an encouraging note today, recording an impressive turnout in defiance of a few determined efforts by Maoist groups to disrupt the process at various places. Voters queued up from early morning, helping the state to notch up a poll percentage of 64.7 per cent with chief minister Arjun Munda’s home district of Seraikela-Kharsawan recording the highest turnout of 79 per...

Two elders of nearby villages, with experience of a panchayat election, were among those who cast their vote today for the state’s first-ever rural polls, united in their scepticism, but hopeful that the chosen ones would deliver on their one and only need: water. Saiba Tuddu (62) of Debanki village of Potka block in East Singhbhum wants to elect a mukhiya who will pay attention to their problem, helping him erase...

The Nitish Kumar-led JD(U)-BJP alliance has won more than four-fifths of the Bihar assembly seats, but there is one unusual aspect to this landslide. The alliance got a little less than two-fifths of the votes cast. Why should this be unusual? Check out the accompanying chart and you will find that other wins of similar magnitude in terms of seats have invariably been the result of substantially larger vote shares. The comparisons...