Eight days after Gandhian Anna Hazare called off his fast demanding a stronger Lokpal law, the joint committee to draft the bill met on Saturday for the first time amid a controversy over a CD allegedly involving eminent lawyer and panel co-chairman Shanti Bhushan. The meeting chaired by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee was held at North Block and attended by Ministers P Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal, M Veerappa Moily and Salman Khurshid...

Family members and friends hail Supreme Court order granting bail to rights Activist Friends, family members and Union Ministers on Friday hailed the Supreme Court order granting bail to rights Activist Binayak Sen, with his lawyer Ram Jethmalani saying the verdict was an endorsement of the right to freedom of speech as “a principle of democracy.” Union Minister Salman Khurshid expressed happiness over the court decision to release Dr. Sen, who was...

Social Activist Anna Hazare has cash assets worth Rs.68,688.36. He owns 0.07 hectares of family land in Ralegan Siddhi which is being used by his family. Two other pieces of land donated to him by the Army and by a villager have been donated by him for village use. This is all that Mr. Hazare, who lives in a temple in Ralegan Siddhi, a model village, owns. Sent to chairman The assets of...

Violence is back in West Bengal's Purba Medinipur district as the polling date for the 16 Assembly seats here draws close: Communist Party of India (Marxist) cadres are returning, under police protection, to the villages from where they fled in the wake of the Trinamool Congress' stunning successes here in recent elections. In West Bengal's ground zero, Nandigram — located in Purba Medinipur district — the problem is particularly acute. The...

He may be a sympathiser. That doesn't make him guilty of sedition: Judge The Supreme Court on Friday granted bail to Dr. Binayak Sen, observing that no case of sedition was made out against the rights Activist, who was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment by a trial court in Chhattisgarh. A Bench of Justices H.S. Bedi and C.K. Prasad, after hearing senior counsel Ram Jethmalani for the petitioner and senior...