-The Hindu The West Bengal Government will introduce a Bill in the upcoming Budget Session of the State Assembly to ensure that public services are delivered to people on time, said Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee here on Wednesday. Fines will be imposed on government servants if it is found that services are not delivered on time, she told journalists after a Cabinet meeting. The legislation, Paschim Banga Lok Parisheba Adhikar Bill, 2013 (West...

-The Times of India The Cabinet on Thursday will consider a Bill providing for time-bound delivery of services like pensions, passports, caste CERTificates, ration cards and tax refunds with a penalty of Rs 250 a day subject to a maximum of Rs 50,000 for default. The right of citizens for time-bound delivery of goods and services and redressal of grievances Bill is to be enacted under the concurrent list, which means all...

Introduced in the Lok Sabha in December 2011, the UPA government’s Food Security Bill is finally going to be discussed in the current (Budget) Session of Parliament. The proposed legislation is now slated to see many additional amendments from the government, following criticism from the States, NGOs and diverse stake-holders working on access to food and child health. Attempt here is to summarise in a Q & A format the...

-The Hindustan Times The CAG has found several shortcomings in the implementation of the first UPA government’s Rs. 52,500-crore farm loan waiver scheme — while thousands of ineligible farmers got the benefit, many eligible applicants were left out. The CAG report, tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, disclosed that it had audited 80,299 beneficiaries across 25 states, which was less than 1% of the total 34.5 million recipients. The scheme had two components —...

-The Hindu Evidence of tampering with, overwriting & alteration of records The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), in a report tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, pointed out that several ineligible farmers were favoured and a large number of deserving small and marginal farmers left out in implementation of the United Progressive Alliance’s much-touted Rs. 52,000-crore farm loan waiver scheme. The scheme, meant to help indebted farmers in districts where suicides occur, was so...