-The Telegraph New Delhi: The law commission has opposed the concept of compulsory voting, saying it is "highly undesirable", and recommended that either the President or a governor - and not the Speaker - should decide whether to disqualify a lawmaker who switches sides. The recommendations are among a series of electoral reforms that the commission, headed by retired Delhi High Court Chief Justice A.P. Shah, has suggested in a report it...

-Frontline The Left and other national parties protest against the NDA government's attempts to dilute the MGNREGS by limiting its budget and reducing its reach. IN a rare show of solidarity, representatives of several political parties took issue with the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government on its controversial proposal to restructure the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). The opposition, which was initially confined to the...

-The Indian Express They were entitled to a total of Rs. 516.93 cr. in 2009-14 Bangalore: Members of the 15th Lok Sabha from Karnataka have spent about 75 per cent of the funds under the Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS). Among them, Bellary MP J. Shantha has spent the least - Rs. 5.89 crore out of the Rs. 12.11 crore released (48.65 per cent). According to the Union Ministry of...

-The Indian Express Bangalore: It was a Lok Sabha Byelection fought and won by fulfilling a basic, daily need. In the Bangalore Rural Lok Sabha constituency in the suburbs of the city, winning Congress candidate D K Suresh offered the people a straightforward deal- bottled drinking water dispensed through innovative "water ATMs". Suresh, the brother of Congress leader D K Shivakumar, set up 33 water ATMs, dispensing kiosks attached to reserve...