-Livemint Finance minister Arun Jaitley says govt is considering making the use of Aadhaar mandatory for real estate transactions New Delhi/Bengaluru: In a move aimed at curbing the use of black money in property deals, the government is considering linking real estate transactions with Aadhaar, the unique identity number. If implemented, the move could provide a trail of all real estate transactions by an individual. It could also potentially solve the problem...

-The Indian Express The Right to Information (RTI) has never been without its sceptics. In the past few years, attempts to check it have become so persistent that they seem part of a larger design. One sees in them shades of jittery response by the great organs of the state and their moribund bureaucracies, forced out of their comfort zone defined by that perennial bane of good governance, "axiomatic institutional secrecy". The...

-Ahmedabad Mirror The Supreme Court on last Friday had issued notice to Gujarat government on a plea by an NGO seeking compensation to families of over 600 debt-ridden farmers who had allegedly committed suicide in the state from 2003 to 2012. However, information sought under the Right To Information Act by Mirror regarding the same from the Union Ministry of Agriculture revealed that between 2009 and 2013, no farmer had committed...

-The Business Standard Most key functions now handled by the finance ministry and other govt departments When Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently extended a Rs 8,000-crore central support for building roads in Jammu & Kashmir, Union Cabinet's approval for the big-ticket announcement came in barely 48 hours. Unlike in the past, the proposal did not get stuck in the corridors of the Planning ComMISsion, a Nehruvian-era body. The ComMISsion, which occupied the centre...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Supreme Court today castigated the governments of Chhattisgarh and Bihar for providing inadequate and inaccurate data on MISsing children and for not adhering to its order on mandatory FIRs. A three-judge bench of Chief Justice H.L. Dattu, Justices A.K. Sikri and Arun MISra, which heard representatives of both states, asked them to file fresh affidavits detailing the number of children rescued and the number of FIRs filed while...