The Centre, while seeking to recall/modify the July 4 Supreme Court order on the black money issue, has disputed the finding that certain admissions and concessions were made by the government counsel during the course of hearing of the petition filed by the former Union Law Minister, Ram Jethmalani. On July 15, the Centre filed an application for recall of the order (briefly published on July 16). According to the application...

Anna Hazare's campaign against corruption has a curious side-effect. It has turned the spotlight on India's lack of pre-legislative transparency. We may accept or dismiss team Anna's Jan Lokpal draft but his movement — and the subsequent build-up of hope and betrayal — has unwittingly exposed the systemic opaqueness in which our laws are conceived, written, debated and passed. The Lokpal Bill 2011 is one among 67-odd bills listed as...

A strong Lokpal Bill is necessary to fight corruption, but it cannot become a “supreme body” above Parliament with control over the legislature, executive and judiciary, Sudhakar Reddy, deputy general secretary of the national council of the Communist Party of India (CPI), has said. Speaking at the launch of the anti-corruption campaign by the Left parties here on Saturday, Mr. Sudhakar Reddy said that participation of civil society organisations could not...

The Centre on Friday vented its strong opposition to what it termed the judiciary taking over the executive's function and moved the Supreme Court seeking recall of the black money order to oversee a probe that includes alleged hawala operations of Hasan Ali Khan and Kashinath Tapuria. "The order completely eliminated the role and denuded the constitutional responsibility of the executive which itself is answerable to Parliament," the UPA government said,...

The communal violence bill prepared by the National Advisory Council (NAC) seeks fundamentally to change how the government deals with violence against minorities. The bill focuses on religious and linguistic minorities as well the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, but religious minorities are at its heart. The bill has some undeniable strengths, but it suffers from two analytically fatal flaws. First, it places excessive faith in the state machinery. Though...