-Live Mint Evasion of duty of over Rs.50 lakh to be made non-bailable offence; arrest provisions under service tax proposed The government may find itself in hot water on budget proposals that make duty evasion beyond a certain threshold a non-bailable offence, allow arrest on suspected withholding of service tax, and provide tax authorities powers to recover dues from a defaulter’s bankers.   Although finance minister P. Chidambaram in his budget presentation on 28...

-The Hindu While the people of Jammu & Kashmir have a deep-rooted mistrust of state institutions, there are also substantive and unacceptable provisions in the proposed legislation While much of the country is focused on the budget and its implications for the economy and individual pocketbooks, Kashmir is focused, with much trepidation, on a draft police reform bill. This in itself gives one a sense of the disconnect that exists between Kashmir...

-The United Nations Some 2,000 representatives from 150 governments, indigenous groups, businesses and civil society today gathered at a United Nations-backed conference in Bangkok, Thailand, which aims to find ways to stop wildlife poaching and illegal trading. At the conference of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), delegates will examine some 70 proposals to amend the current wildlife trade system, which has been in...

-The Hindustan Times Fatehabad: If women bodies are the epitome of liberation for the fairer sex, in many villages and hamlets of Haryana, women are increasingly shunning ghunghat (veil) and leading an example. Sushma Bhadu of Dhani Miyan Khan village in Fatehabad district not only fought to swagger among bête noires, but also took a pop at the centuries-old cultural tradition that dictates she be covered with a ghunghat in public places. A...

-The Hindu “The purpose of a Budget – and the job of a Finance Minister,” P. Chidambaram declared in his speech, “is to create the economic space and find the resources to achieve the socio economic objectives.” Now that the presentation of and the spate of initial responses to the budget are behind us, it may be appropriate to ask how far the Minister went in accomplishing his self-defined task. Mr. Chidambaram...