-The Indian Express   The Election Commission ponders the “novel challenge” posed by Anna Hazare and his team, which has vowed to campaign against the Congress in the five states that will hold elections in the near future. According to Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi, this raises questions of “propriety and ethics”. The EC, he said, would watch carefully for any breach of the model code of conduct, for any hate speech...

High drama in Lok Sabha; BJP not helping to strengthen Lokpal, says Pranab; Opposition terms Bill “weak” The Lok Sabha on Tuesday night passed a historic Lokpal and Lokayuktas Bill, 2011, but defeated a parallel Constitution (116th Amendment) Bill, which would have given the Lokpal constitutional status. In a major embarrassment to the UPA government, Leader of the House Pranab Mukherjee admitted that the government did not have the requisite two-thirds majority...

The Republic of India has a billion (and more) citizens who, at any given time, are involved in a thousand (and more) controversies. Knowing which controversy is the most significant is always hard, and often impossible, to judge. Even so, we can be fairly certain that 2011 will go down in Indian history as the year of the Great Lokpal Debate, just as 1962 was the year of the war...

The All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA) has called upon Parliament to reject the National Food Security Bill introduced in the Lok Sabha on Thursday. In a statement issued on Friday, the association said the Bill was a “more dangerous and rehashed version” of the current Targeted Public Distribution System, that proved to be an “utter failure” in view of the manner in which it eroded the food security of the...

There was wide criticism of the perceived attack on federalism Members of Parliament across the political spectrum are apprehensive of what the establishment of a supreme Lokpal — answerable to none — may hold for the future of the parliamentary system of governance as India has known and for the entire political establishment. Even as the process for the historic legislation for establishing a Lokpal began on Thursday with the introduction of...