The Union environment and forests ministry (MoEF) has taken a position countering the Union government's department of personnel and training (DoPT) and stuck to its demand for a CBI inquiry in the forestry scam cases in Haryana. In a letter written to the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), the environment ministry has reiterated its view that severe violations of forests and wildlife laws were committed in the three cases - digging a...

-The Telegraph The manner in which a professor and a retired engineer were arrested and locked up for over 16 hours in Calcutta has blown the lid off a tactic increasingly being employed in Bengal to intimidate or settle scores with dissenters. The weapon of mass-scale harassment is an oft-mentioned but little-understood piece of paper called the FIR or first information report. The method is scary — a word that cropped up several...

Chief Justice of India (CJI) S H Kapadia on Thursday said a very good law like Right to Information (RTI) was being misused to ask irrelevant and intrusive questions seriously impeding the working of the Judges and the Supreme Court.  When a bench of CJI and Justices D K Jain, S S Nijjar, R P Desai and J S Khehar were deliberating on reporting guidelines of sub-judice matters, Justice Kapadia said,...

-The Hindu The Rajasthan Assembly on Thursday passed a significant anti-corruption legislation which would facilitate the Government to confiscate and attach any disproportionate property amassed by the corrupt public servants. The Rajasthan Special Courts Act, 2012 passed in the Assembly by a voice vote is modelled after existing legislations in the States of Bihar and Orissa. The legislation brings everyone who draws salary from the Government, including the Chief Minister, under its...

The time has come for optimal pricing of water and power to prevent an unlimited pumping of groundwater and aid better coordination amongst competing demands for the scarce resource, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said here on Tuesday. Dr. Singh's observations come at a time when there is a debate on the pricing of water and privatisation of services in the sector. The Ministry of Water Resources is working on a reforms-oriented...