Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress today expressed “serious objections” to the proposed bill against communal violence, saying the current draft undermined the country’s federal structure. The BJP said it would intensify its campaign against the Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Regulations) Bill, 2011, emboldened by the objections of other non-Congress parties, although none backed its pet “bias against Hindus” line. ( ) Mamata did not attend the National...

The government's auditor has accused Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd of violating terms of the contract for its showcase Andhra offshore acreage and expressed doubt over the costs at which India's biggest private sector oil company contracted goods and services for bringing the largest gas discovery into production. The Comptroller and Auditor General's final report on a special audit of Reliance's Krishna-Godavari basin fields, presented to Parliament on Thursday, also suggests...

-The Telegraph   The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has slammed the petroleum ministry for failing to take back 25 per cent of the acreage of the KG-D6 oil and gas block off the Andhra coast from Reliance Industries after it reneged on its drilling obligations. The long-awaited report from the CAG based on a detailed performance audit of the country’s hydrocarbon production sharing contracts was tabled in Parliament today. The nation’s auditor surprisingly...

A report from a sample survey of the functioning of the public distribution system in 12 villages in two districts in Orissa, a state usually associated with a poor PDS. While there are errors in exclusion and inclusion of households covered, there has been a vast improvement in operation of the PDS; below the poverty line households seem to be receiving their entitlements. The households also express a strong preference...

The global 'farmland grab' in Ethiopia and the rest of Africa has become competitive, with companies from Asia, including India and China, joining it. AN extraordinary new process has been at work in the past few years: the aggressive entry of Indian corporations into the markets for agricultural land in Africa. At one level, this process is simply following the hoary old tradition in global capitalism of firms (often supported...