-The Indian Express   The Allahabad High Court on Monday issued notices to the Centre, UP government, Greater Noida and Noida authorities and the Yamuna Expressway Development Industrial Authority (YEIDA) on a petition demanding a CBI probe into land acquisitions in Noida and Greater Noida from 2005 to 2010. Asking them to file counter-affidavits in two weeks, the court said it would examine the maintainability of the petition on the next date...

-The Telegraph   The Union cabinet today approved the Lokpal bill after overruling Manmohan Singh, who again advocated bringing the Prime Minister within the corruption ombudsman’s ambit. The higher judiciary, conduct of MPs inside Parliament, and the lower bureaucracy too have been kept out of the Lokpal’s jurisdiction. Anna Hazare, whose civil society group had insisted on all these sections and the Prime Minister being included, termed the draft a “cruel joke” and...

-The Indian Express   Two months after the Supreme Court issued notice to the Uttar Pradesh government to respond to alleged anomalies in MGNREGS pointed out in the survey report of the Centre for Environment and Food Security (CEFS), the state government has formed special teams to investigate the complaints in five districts of Bundelkhand. Five teams have been formed to do spot verification of the anomalies pointed out in the report,...

-PTI   Holding the Naveen Patnaik government responsible for the delay in the implementation of the proposed POSCO steel project, Orissa Pradesh Congress Committee Tuesday sought Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's intervention to shift it to barren land near the present site in Jagatsinghpur. "I told the Prime Minister about the fertile and multi-crop land at Dhinkia where the state government has identified land for setting up the POSCO project ... I informed...

LUCKNOW: In Uttar Pradesh, over Rs 3,700 crore of central health funds may have been systematically looted over the past six years. Many people, including Rahul Gandhi, had spoken of the NRHM bungle, but the size of the scam indicates that not only were officials at the level of CMO and above involved, but also this could not have been carried out without the knowledge and support of their masters....