-PTI Amid a demand by Team Anna for radical poll reforms, Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi says he is not in favour of ‘Right to Recall' or ‘Right to Reject' elected representatives, warning that any such electoral rule will “destabilise” the country. Opposing any move to have a ‘Right to Recall' as in many developed countries, Mr. Quraishi said it may not work in India given the size of the country. “It's not...

Chief Information Commissioner Satyananda Mishra demanded on Friday that the Central Information Commission be upgraded to the status of a Constitutional authority along the lines of the Election Commission of India and the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. RTI circles interpreted Mr. Mishra's intervention, coming after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's call for a critical look at the Right to Information Act, as an effort to safeguard the Act and the...

The essay attracted the ire of Hindutva Activists because it talks about 300 different versions of the epic Most academicians at Delhi University are feeling betrayed by their own fraternity, the reason — the Academic Council's recent decision to drop from the history syllabus a celebrated essay by the late scholar and linguist A.K. Ramanujan on the Ramayana, despite intense opposition from the history department. The essay, “Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five examples...

-The Economic Times   Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called for a review of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, one of the UPA's trophy legislations, potentially exposing the government to a fresh stand-off with civil society. Addressing a two-day annual convention of the Central Information Commission here, Singh said the transparency law should not adversely affect deliberative processes in the government and discourage honest, well-meaning public servants from voicing their views. He...

The popular outrage over the official definition of poverty at abysmally low levels of daily income, of Rs 26 in rural areas and Rs 32 in urban areas, assumes the state will deny basic services to a household whose income is above the figure. This is totally erroneous. There is no mechanism in the hands of the government to ascertain income or expenditure to identify the 'poor' on the ground. The...