-The Indian Express   In an apparent attack on Team Anna, Congress president and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi today said that corruption cannot be eradicated by mere slogans, and those creating a “hue and cry” should look within. Sonia was forced to cancel her scheduled rally at Gauchar Chamoli (Uttarakhand) because of “a viral fever” today and in her speech read out at the venue, she underlined that her government was committed to...

-PTI   An attempt to use RTI to get details of Sonia Gandhi’s trips abroad, including that in August for surgery, came to nought as no government department appeared to have the information to share. Kailash Kanwar of Bhilwara, Rajasthan, filed an application under the RTI Act for details of foreign trips in the past two years by the chairperson of the UPA and the National Advisory Council. The application sent to the external...

The Centre is preparing to introduce its own version of the Lokpal bill following its assessment that Team Anna’s Jan Lokpal bill does not enjoy as widespread a support among experts as assumed initially. A Parliament standing committee is looking into the bill now. Not all the panel’s recommendations may be accepted but the government has taken heart from the developments during the committee’s talks with various groups. “We have interacted with...

The Centre is exploring the possibility of introducing different petrol prices for two-wheelers and cars in an attempt to combat a perception that it is insensitive to the plight of the common people. Facing a flurry of protests from allies, Opposition parties and consumer groups against the hike in petrol prices last week, senior cabinet ministers are considering whether differential pricing is possible to insulate users of two-wheelers and three-wheelers from...

Chikkamade Gowda had once told the Centre to give him poison. It was better than being evicted from his forest habitat. That was in 1974. Thirty-seven years on, the Soliga tribal and some 16,500 fellow sufferers are celebrating their homecoming, thanks to a landmark central amendment. The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2008, allows them to use nearly 60 per cent of their ancestral land,...