Taking a "serious view" of Shunglu Committee's findings on alleged irregularities in awarding broadcast rights of Commonwealth Games, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday warned of "stern action" against the guilty. "The Prime Minister has taken a serious view of the findings in the first report of the Shunglu Committee on Host Broadcasting," media advisor to the Prime Minister, Harish Khare, said in a statement. The report has been sent to Cabinet...

India's first Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah is the next chairperson of the National Commission for Minorities (NCM). Mr. Habibullah, who received his orders on Tuesday, will formally take charge on Thursday. Mr. Habibullah, a 1968-batch IAS Officer, will be filling a post that has been lying vacant for the past five months. His predecessor, Mohammad Shafi Quereshi, retired on September 2, 2010. A member of the NCM, who described the chairperson as...

NREGA has always been touted as the UPAs flagship scheme but there have been a number of instances when the scheme has been misused by those who are dispensing funds.   IAS Officers Sukhveer Singh and Chandrashekar Borkar both posted in Seedhi district in Madhya Pradesh, between 2006 and 2007, were charged with misappropriating nine crore rupees during this tenure. Funds meant for NREGA, a scheme that ensures hundred days of work...

Even though the Central Government agreed to link the wages paid under MG-NREGA to the Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labourers (CPIAL), it shied away from paying statutory minimum wages in various states of India. Their logic for this: Lack of clarity on who will bear the extra financial burden—the Centre or the states? A letter from the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to UPA and NAC Chairperson Sonia Gandhi dated 31...

When Manmohan Singh wrote to the Sonia Gandhi-led NAC on December 31, rejecting its recommendations to increase minimum wages paid under the NREGS, he had referred to a “consensual view” that emerged from ministries involved. Gandhi had written to the PM in November that workers under NREGS were being paid less than the minimum wage  in some states. “This is a totally unacceptable situation and needs to be corrected at...