-The Hindu National Committee in Solidarity with Jaitapur Struggle writes to PM The National Committee in Solidarity with Jaitapur Struggle — a group of like minded political people opposed to setting up nuclear power projects in the country — has asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to cancel the proposed nuclear plant at Jaitapur. Citing concerns over the safety of the proposed nuclear reactors at Jaitapur and the financial credentials of the French company...

Two sets of government data on UPA government's most famous flagship programme Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), for which Rs. 33000 crore was earmarked in 2012-13 budget, provide widely different figures for several states, a feature which experts say is indicative of the corruption in the scheme and weakness of social audit or accountability. The government has increasingly relied on Management Information System (MIS) for monitoring NREGA at...

-The Hindu CAG’s concept of presumptive loss flawed: Chidambaram Upset at the “unreasonable” disruption of Parliament by the BJP on the issue of allocation of coal blocks and the CAG report, the government went on the offensive on Friday, terming totally flawed the Comptroller and Auditor-General’s concept of presumptive loss and maintaining that no loss took place because the coal was still unexploited. “The policy for allocation of coal blocks has been the...

-The Hindu Not only has the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) defended its position vis-à-vis allegations that it is exceeding its constitutional mandate, it has also been vindicated by the then former Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee. At an Economic Editor’s Conference in 2011, he said, “I am making it clear that I do not think the CAG is exceeding its jurisdiction, because the basic responsibility of the CAG is to identify...

-The Times of India The estimate of Rs 1.86 lakh crore mentioned in the CAG report on Coalgate as "windfall gains" to private players who bagged coal mines allocated by the government without bidding is not sacrosanct, according to senior sources in the auditing agency. "We have never claimed that our estimate is not open to debate," sources said, adding that even the expression "windfall gains" was not that of the auditor....