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In choosing not to adopt the ordinance route to bring in anti-corruption measures, the United Progressive Alliance has managed to avoid questions about propriety and legality. It is unlikely that President Pranab Mukherjee could have been persuaded to promulgate ordinances to introduce laws that Parliament had the opportunity, but not the will, to enact. If the government had gone ahead, Mr. Mukherjee might have asked for reconsideration of the advice, causing embarrassment to the ruling party, especially its vice-president Rahul Gandhi. In the circumstances, it was surprising that the ordinance route was considered at all. It is true that several good measures fell by the wayside in the din and chaos of the final Parliament session. Yet, the undemocratic ordinance route is not a proper substitute for sound legislative management to which both the government and the Opposition have to contribute. With the Opposition not ready to keep Parliament in session indefinitely, the Houses adjou...

Submarining has always been a dangerous profession, meant only for volunteers drawn from serving navy personnel. It is also a relatively young man’s profession, with commanding officers of conventional submarines going “over the top” in their late thirties, into staff jobs. The selection is strict and the training rigorous. New entrants are carefully screened in psychological tests to survive in close proximity, under difficult conditions, with other human beings, for long periods of time. Not surprisingly, the camaraderie is close and submariners make friends for life. The Indian submarine service commissioned its first submarine in 1967 and the pioneers realised the imperative of laying down the strictest standards of safety right at the beginning. The explosion on Sindhurakshak occurred in 2013, after years of accident-free service. The Sindhuratna fire, close on the heels of the earlier explosion, poses a huge leadership challenge to senior naval officers in assur...

Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India Nandan Nilekani on Monday said he would enrol for primary membership with the Congress in the next two days. Expressing confidence on contesting the general elections from Bangalore South constituency, he said: “The public wants to see new faces. I am clean and capable; a local candidate with a good track record. Bangalore needs an ambassador who fights for the cause, and I will provide that. I have already started my work and have been visiting colleges and apartments to interact with the public.” Mr. Nilekani was speaking to presspersons on the sidelines of the inauguration of a solar research and development facility in the Global Academy of Technology here. The Infosys co-founder also batted for renewable energy, emphasising that subsidies must be provided on hybrid products to make renewable resources more popular. The facility is a collaboration between the academy and SunEdison, a solar technology manufactur...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will on Tuesday meet with Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa for the first time since 2012, on what will likely be his last official foreign visit, a two-day summit of leaders of the seven nations participating in the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation, BIMSTEC. The meeting comes just days ahead of a scheduled vote on a resolution calling for an international enquiry into alleged Sri Lankan war crimes at the United Nations Human Rights Council. Dr. Singh had declined to travel to Sri Lanka for the Commonwealth Heads of Government summit, amidst intense criticism of the country’s human rights record. Tamil Nadu politicians have criticised the meeting, with Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader K. Karunanidhi writing in a party journal that while Tamils were “seeking a resolution for an independent probe into war crimes in Sri Lanka, Singh is holding talks with Rajapaksa, ignoring sentiments of Tamils...

Gujarat Chief Minister is man of development, says LJP leader   Lok Jan Shakti Party (LJP) president Ram Vilas Paswan cemented his renewed alliance with the BJP by addressing Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as “Vikas Purush (man of development)” and “future Prime Minister” at a rally in Muzaffarpur district in Bihar on Monday.   Sharing the dais with the prime ministerial candidate of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), Mr. Paswan, who resigned from the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in the wake of the 2002 Gujarat riots, denied the charge of communalism levelled against Mr. Modi.   “At present, Gujarat is a State where there has been no communal incident since 2002, whereas in Bihar, there is one every month. There is no rigid caste structure today. Everyone has become one community. India is a garden with floral variety. The person who tends all the flowers is a good gardener,” he said.   The rally ...

In yet another embarrassment to the government, former Supreme Court judge K.T. Thomas on Monday turned down the offer to head Lokpal search committee, days after jurist Fali Nariman opted out of the panel. “I have written to Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) expressing disinclination to head Lokpal search committee,” former Judge Thomas told PTI on phone from Kottayam, Kerala. “The reason is when I went through the rules, our committee which is called the search committee was to recommend names to select committee. The select committee need or need not to accept those names. So it was not worth while to have this search committee,” the former judge said. When asked whether the recent refusal from Nariman to be part of the search committee had any role to play in his decision, former Judge Thomas said, “It was not for the same reason”. “It (Nariman’s refusal) became a point to go through the rules whether it was worth while to be on ...

Ignoring the letter written by the former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy, Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan is understood to have cleared three names for nomination to the Legislative Council under the Governor’s quota. Highly-placed sources in the Raj Bhavan said the file with the names of Nandi Yellaiah, T. Ratna Bai and Kantethi Satyanarayana Raju was forwarded to the Chief Secretary P.K. Mohanty for further action. The government order is expected to be issued once the Election Commission gives the clearance in view of the model code of conduct. The former Chief Minister, while sending proposals to fill the nominated quota, had recommended the above three along with his close aide Raghuram Reddy. The Governor is said to have first given his nod to the three names, but Mr. Reddy refused to issue the relevant orders as the fourth name was kept in abeyance. Before resigning his post, Mr. Kiran Reddy, in a four-page letter, reportedly clarified to the Governor tha...

NAGPUR: From March 1, passengers not turning up or less number of persons travelling in groups will not be paid refund after railways modified its scheme on grant of refund from public reservation system (PRS) on cancellation of tickets. Central Railway senior divisional commercial manager (SrDCM) Dr Sumant Deulkar confirmed that Railway Board vide a circular issued on February 21 to all general managers has intimated to implement the decision from March 1. In partial modification under 'Computerized Coaching Refund Scheme', the Railway Board has decided that refund across the counters will not be granted in case of non-turned up passengers and less number of persons travelling in groups. However, refund under this system will be granted for reserved and RAC tickets in cases of lower class travel, failure of AC in coach, discontinuation of journey by passengers due to dislocation of train services, accommodation not provided and cancellation of trains. For waiting list ticke...

Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram’s estimate for India’s 2014-15 food subsidy bill of Rs 1,15,000 crore in the interim budget is more than twice of India’s Poverty Gap, or the cost of pushing all households above the poverty line if cash transfers were used instead. The Poverty Gap for India, as per the latest NSSO Consumption Expenditure Survey data available (for the year 2011-12) is Rs. 55,744 crore. A highly-placed government official explained the reason behind the food subsidy substantially exceeding the poverty gap: “The Food Corporation of India (FCI) does incur huge costs on holding procured food grains and it can be argued that there is tremendous potential for its operations to be more efficient”. “The point is not that the food subsidy should be discontinued but to see if limited resources are being used efficiently for targeting poverty effectively.” The Finance Ministry has in fact capped reimbursements to the FCI from the fis...

Stating that the forthcoming elections will delay the reform process and hurt growth, international rating agency Moody’s on Monday said it expects growth to pick up to only 5.5 per cent in FY’15. “We expect GDP growth to remain weak at 5.5 per cent in FY’15 as the elections will delay reforms needed to revive growth,” it said in a note. Growth has been below the trend for much of FY’14 and the government’s official estimate pegs it at 4.9 per cent, a bit higher than 4.5 per cent achieved in FY’13. Elections are scheduled for April-May. It said interest rates will continue to remain high and hence the rupee will continue to be volatile, making it difficult for importers and exporters. The agency also gave a negative outlook for non-financial corporates in 2014 on weak economy, political uncertainty and effects of the US Fed’s tapering. “Lower economic growth, volatile exchange rates, rising borrowing costs and slow economi...

Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan on Monday said the central bank’s focus is to bring down inflation to boost investor confidence. Mr Rajan also expressed hope that a stable government after the Lok Sabha elections will continue the broad fiscal policies of the current regime and India may finally get the Goods and Services Tax (GST), an ambitious indirect tax reform measure. “My belief is that we should be focused on getting our fundamentals right and that has been our focus ever since the summer of last year. One of the main aspects of our fundamentals is the inflation rate. “If investors have a sense that inflation rate is going to come down, both domestic and international investors, they would be more prepared to take a bet on the rupee and that is essentially what we are focused on,” Mr Rajan said in an interview to CNBC. After the US Federal Reserve indicated in May last year that it would taper its monetary stimulus, the rupee depreciated ...

Days after the interim budget, there have been question marks over the accuracy of its key numbers. For instance, the fiscal deficit numbers, both for the current year (2013-14) and the next year (2014-15) at 4.6 per cent and 4.1 per cent, respectively, are, in the eyes of rating agencies and brokerages suspect. Fiscal consolidation might well take place this year, in fact, the deficit is expected to be even better than the “red line: of 4.8 per cent (of GDP) which the Finance Minister had promised will not be breached. The scepticism is on two counts: (a) that a fair bit of window dressing — subsidies getting rolled over into next year and taking credit for dividends that would normally accrue next year — have improved public finance for this year but correspondingly made the task of the next finance minister that much more difficult, (b) more substantial is the criticism that the deficit has been pegged down by cutting down on productive capital expenditure even whi...

The Union Labour Ministry has set up a committee to monitor the implementation of recommendations made by the Justice G.R. Majithia wage board for newspaper employees that were upheld by the Supreme Court on February 7. A senior Ministry official told The Hindu that copies of the notifications had already been sent to the labour departments of State/Union Territory governments and they were asked to monitor their implementation by appointing tripartite committees (consisting of representatives of the labour department, employers and employees).

Italian Premier Matteo Renzi won a crucial confidence vote in Parliament on his brand new government early on Tuesday, managing at least for now to tamp down anger from among his own Democrats. The vote in the Senate came hours after he argued that he could get his country back to work while the last three premiers failed. Mr. Renzi, at 39, Italy’s youngest premier, was sworn into office on Saturday along with an unusually young Cabinet, with many of the Ministers newcomers to national government. The Senate voted 169-139 to confirm Mr. Renzi’s broad coalition, which ranges from his centre-left Democrats to centre-right forces formerly loyal to ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi. Mr. Renzi needed at least 155 votes to clinch the victory, one of two mandatory confidence votes. The second vote, in the Chamber of Deputies, was expected later on Tuesday. Mr. Renzi’s coalition has a comfortable majority in the lower chamber. But he had a closer call in the Senate, where his ...

China on Monday asserted that it had never waged a war to occupy "an inch of land of other countries", days after BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi slammed the Communist giant for its "expansionist mindset". "You mentioned expansionism by the Chinese side. I believe all of you can see that China has never waged a war of aggression to occupy an inch of land of other countries," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told reporters while responding to questions on Modi's remarks. "We always reiterate that we take real actions to commit through the peaceful development path" and are committed to good neighbourliness and cooperative relations, she said. "There has never been any armed clashes in border areas over the years. So there is very strong evidence that we have the capability to maintain peace there. This is very good for the future development of the bilateral relations," she said, highlighting ...