Anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare has lambasted chief minister Ashok Chavan and deputy chief minister Chhagan Bhujbal over the recent selection of the four information commissioners. Calling the selection, ``improper and unfortunate'', Hazare has instructed the duo in a letter on Monday to rectify the situation. Chavan, Bhujbal and Eknath Khadse, leader of the opposition, formed the three-member panel which approved of the name of Vilas Patil, till recently the information commissioner for...

Commissioner of cane development and sugar director A K Monnappa regretted that the benefits of research in agriculture sector were not reaching the farmers adequately though there have been rise in research activities in recent years. Inaugurating the four-day training programme on improved cultivation of sugarcane and sugar beet for the cane development staff of sugar factories in north Karnataka held at the University of Agricultural Sciences in Dharwad on Tuesday,...

Uttar Pradesh is not a state readily associated with dynamic economic reform. But the state has taken giant strides in reforming one of the least reformed industries in India: the sugar industry. The country’s second largest sugar producing state after maharashtra is undertaking an aggressive privatisation of its state-owned sugar mills. It has, just recently, successfully sold off 10 of the 11 operating units of the state’s Sugar Corporation to...

The maharashtra Government has imposed fines of over Rs 26 lakh collectively on primary information officers for ignoring and delaying answers to queries received under the Right to Information Act. On completion of five years of implementation of RTI, as per the figures revealed by state’s Chief Information Commissioner Suresh Joshi on Monday, in 2009, 347 officers were fined Rs 26,57,691 for ignoring the queries and delaying information. The fine has...

Noted social activist Anna Hazare has decided to launch a 'jail bharo' agitation against the 'illegal decision of the state government to condone irregularities' in the Lavasa lake city project coming up near Pune. "The state government's decision to regularise irregularities in Lavasa project is akin to daylight robbery of tribals whose lands have been illegally acquired for the project," Hazare said. "As per law, land of tribals cannot be transferred. But...