'It has been 100 days since the made-for-television arrest of former home and finance minister Palaniappan Chidambaram in the INX-Media matter... So after 100 days of ‘rigorous custodial interrogation’, what have the CBI and the ED been able to prove? How have their cases improved? Is custodial interrogation relevant for cases which largely rely on documentary evidence where fear of tampering is unsubstantiated? These are logical questions that must be raised and answered...'
'On October 22, days before the state of Jammu and Kashmir was officially split into two Union Territories, the state administration announced a new department of registration would be set up. It would function under the revenue department. The aim was to “provide hassle free and speedy service to the citizens for registration of documents pertaining to immovable property like sale, gift, mortgage, lease, bequest”, said a government press release on October 23. The governor had approved the creation of 464 new posts for the new department...
'Nearly two months after the ‘namak-roti' fiasco at a primary school in Mirzapur district of Uttar Pradesh, now, a primary school in the tribal area of Sonbhadra district has been accused of serving adulterated milk to the students under the mid-day meal scheme on November 27. As per the menu of the mid-day meal scheme, prescribed by the Uttar Pradesh government, tehri and milk are supposed to be given to the students.
Electoral bonds are bearer bonds, introduced as a mechanism for individuals and companies to donate money to political parties in India in 2018 by the BJP government. They were introduced without consultation and ignoring objections of the Election Commission and the RBI. Electoral bonds worth Rs.
'In the early hours of Saturday, when the people of Maharashtra were fast asleep, the country awoke to strife and unfreedom. News of the death of democracy – the tearing up of constitutional norms – was broken by the executioner-in-chief, Narendra Modi, through his preferred medium, Twitter. Curiously, the morning newspapers had all led with the headline that the Shiv Sena’s Uddhav Thackeray was going to be Maharashtra chief minister.
'NCP leader Ajit Pawar sparked alarm, controversy and furious debate in Maharashtra this morning after leading his party in support of the BJP in its bid to retain power in Maharashtra. Mr Pawar, who was last month named by the Enforcement Directorate in the Rs. 25,000-crore Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank Ltd. scam, was sworn in as Deputy Chief Minister. Seconds earlier the BJP's Devendra Fadnavis, whose government had repeatedly attacked Ajit Pawar over alleged corruption charges, had been sworn in as Chief Minister for a second term.
'Though the Ministry of Finance had thought about sharing details of the electoral bond scheme with political parties and seeking the public’s comments on it, the idea was dropped after a presentation before the prime minister on August 21, 2017... RTI activist Bharadwaj says it is apparent that during the meeting with the prime minister, the decision to not consult political parties and not circulate the draft scheme to all national and state parties with a 15-day window to seek their comments was taken.
'The Bhartiya Janta Party took a large donation from a company that is now being probed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for facilitating “terror funding,” financial declarations by the BJP itself reveal. RKW Developers Ltd, a company at the heart of a probe by the ED for carrying out transactions with and buying properties from the late Iqbal Memon alias Iqbal Mirchi – an accused in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts and a close aide of mafia boss Dawood Ibrahim – gave money to the ruling party, according to the BJP’s filings with the Election Commission.
'The Prime Minister’s Office under Narendra Modi reportedly ordered for rules about electoral bonds – which the Centre itself had notified just two months earlier – to be broken in March 2018, ahead of assembly elections in six states. The broken rules, Nitin Sethi reports for HuffPost India, were first called an ‘exception’ but quickly turned into the norm. The report is based on government documents obtained under the Right to Information Act by transparency activist Commodore Lokesh Batra (retired)...
'...Journalist Nitin Sethi, who authored the report, has earlier on November 18-19, published two reports in Huffpost India, revealing the stringent opposition from the Reserve Bank of India, the Election Commission and opposition parties on the unveiling of the controversial electoral bearer bonds. It has been revealed that the Narendra Modi-led government dismissed the Election Commission of India’s strident opposition to electoral bonds, lied to the Indian Parliament and finally resorted to a hurried cover-up when it's misstatements were caught...'
