-DNA   Following reports of a three-year-old receiving remuneration in Kutch under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), the central government will probe into corruption in implementation of the Act in Gujarat. This was informed by Union minister for rural development and panchayati raj, Vilasrao Deshmukh on Sunday. Deshmukh also threatened to cut short Union government's fund if the state government fails to take appropriate action to stem the...

There is a photograph of the Second Round Table Conference in London, which shows every person in the room looking at the camera except for Mohandas K Gandhi. The maharajas, the leaders of the Depressed Classes and the Muslim League, the officers of His Majesty’s Government — all have their face turned at the photographer come to capture them. Not Gandhi, who sits in his chair, wrapped in a shawl,...

Sheikh Sajed Ali doesn’t dare leave the Jamshed Ali Bhawan party office in West Midnapore’s Keshpur. It’s the only refuge the sharecropper has been able to find since the Left Front led by the Communist Party of India-Marxist, or CPM, got wiped out in the recent assembly elections by the Trinamool Congress and its allies. Ali is terrified to venture out. He says his family is being asked to pay `2...

Senior lawyer and Kashmir Committee chief Ram Jethmalani has demanded that the Armed Forces Special Powers Act and the Public Safety Act be revoked, expressing concern at the human rights situation in the State. At the end of the committee's five-day visit to Kashmir, he told journalists that New Delhi was partly responsible for the situation. He said he would constitute a group of lawyers in Delhi to fight the cases...

-The Telegraph   The talks to draft the Lok Pal bill appeared to have hit a wall after the civil society members stayed away from today’s meeting and left the field open for the government to raise the issue of civility. The government, whose representatives went ahead with the meeting, asked the Anna Hazare-led group not to derail proceedings by “raising extraneous issues” and publicly abusing ministers. “We have been called cheats, frauds,...