Public can lodge complaints against judges with a national oversight committee The bill will mandate judges to declare assets and liabilities Oversight committee to be headed by a retired Chief Justice of India The Union Cabinet on Tuesday approved a bill providing for a mechanism to deal with complaints against judges of the High Courts and the Supreme Court. The Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill sets judicial standards and makes judges accountable for their...

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which has revitalised the rural landscape across the country, stands diminished in the land of its birth, Rajasthan, hijacked and held to ransom by vested interests and stripped of its backbone of an open social audit. As the Andhra experience has shown, there is one ingredient that can bring back its vitality: institutionalising citizen audits. But, is the Rajasthan government up to...

It's been nearly a year since the ‘paid news' syndrome — an appalling industry-wide violation of media ethics and a media-related electoral malpractice — was brought to people's attention by a section of the media. The issue still remains in the public domain, drawing critical comment and protest every now and then. The large-scale practice of paid news, particularly during the run-up to elections, has the potential of misleading the...

Centre pressures States to lift additional allocation The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has reiterated its demand for a universal public distribution system with a minimum allocation of 35 kg of grain at Rs. 2 a kg. A two-day meeting of the party's Polit Bureau, which concluded here on Tuesday, said the Central government had ignored the Supreme Court's directive to distribute, free of cost, the huge stocks of grain among the...

Court ordered Haryana govt to return panchayat land sold to DLF in Gurgaon The judgment by the Punjab and Haryana High Court slamming the Haryana government for “acting with bias and malice to show favour to M/s DLF” and ordering it to return to villagers the19 acres of prime land in Nathupur village acquired on a ‘false pretext’ has cheered up the man who led this legal battle. Petitioner Meer Singh,...