It is difficult to recall when our intelligence agencies last foiled a terror strike or a major crime by intercepting phone conversations. On the contrary, their failures led to disasters as the Kargil intrusion, attack on parliament and 26/11. It may not entirely explain their activities but what the latest phone-tapping controversy shows is that these agencies are more pre-occupied with
For more than a week the legislature and the executive have been grappling with the IPL controversy. Almost every enforcement agency is busy digging up the dirt and as more and more murky deals come to surface the cry for an all-encompassing enquiry gets louder, leading to repeated adjournment of parliamentary proceedings. But how fair and meaningful can an enquiry be when it involves several m
The BCCI is a society registered in 1928 under an obscure Tamil Nadu Society Registration Act of 1860 and still retains its colonial –era constitution which makes it a closely-held private club. Paradoxically, it runs the most popular sport and represents the country at international events. As a private body, it keeps its functioning and its balance sheet under wrap but as a public body
With each new revelation into the Indian Premier League, it is getting clearer that a lot more is at stake in this cricket tournament than the prestige of individual players and the teams they represent. And it is not just the franchisees, who have put in crores of investment rupees, that have their eyes fixed on the ball. As per a report in The Times of
The Supreme Court has cautioned the media against interference in pending investigations and trials. According to The Hindu newspaper, Justice Sathasivam, writing the 229-page judgement in the Jessica Lal case, said on Monday, “The freedom of speech protected under Article 19 (1) (a) of the Constitution has to be carefully and cautiously used, so as to avoid interference in the administra
Punjab has announced that it is acquiring 2,000 acres of land for developing IT and IT-related projects in the state. Press reports indicate that Punjab Infotech, the state government`s consulting firm, is acquiring 1,400 acres of land in Rajpura for setting up an IT park. It has been reported that Punjab Infotech has 12.11 acres of prime land at Railmajra, 50 acres in Kapurthala, 280 acres in
The furore over minister of state for external affairs Shashi Tharoor`s latest gaffe has had at least one positive fallout. It has created a conducive climate for a clean-up of the Indian Premier League. Even as the income tax department may have suddenly swung into action for all the wrong reasons, it cannot be anybody`s case that the league should be allowed to function behind the veil of sec
India’s telecom czar, national knowledge commission’s chairman and advisor to prime minister on innovation, Sam Pitroda while addressing the participants of TechED 2010 Wednesday has said that, “All the money spent by different states on e—governance projects is waste as these are not scalable.” He had added there should be standards at the centra
ICICI Bank has been ordered to pay Rs 12.85 lakh to a customer who lost Rs 6.50 lakh in a fraud – known as phishing. Replying to a mail that Umashankar Sivasubramaniam thought was from the bank but actually was not, he revealed his password and the phishers broke his internet bank account and stole money. The bank`s defence before Tamil Nadu IT Secretary PWC Davidar (as also in re
The mammoth census exercise has just begun with the count of households, to be followed by the count of an estimated 1.2 billion people. As it happened just before the census in recent decades, several groups have demanded that data on backward castes should be collected. Government officials, including Home Secretary GK Pillai, have said there is no plan to change the practice – the last
1981 Indian websites have been defaced in the first three months of 2010 as per the statistics released by Cert-In (India Computer Emergency Response Team). If the above was not enough a recent study by SecDev Group and the Information Warfare Monitor has highlighted the Chinese cyber espionage targeting Indian government institutions ; resulting in the theft of classified documents. Th
The Government’s proposal to phase out Haj subsidy to the tune of Rs 826 (Hindustan Times) is bound to generate much heat and dust. Somee Ulemas have been consistently opposing the subsidy calling it un-Islamic. But the fact remains that a large section of pilgrims are able to make it to Mecca, the ultimate destination of every Muslim, because of the subsidy. Rs 826 crore might seem
Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management, made a telling point on Times Now last night. He said when the state does not have a strategy it goes in for operations. Something the central forces seemed to be doing by rushing to take the Maoists head on in the Dantewada forests, a territory they knew little about and ended up losing 76 jawans. Sahni suggested
Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit has slammed the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) for its report on procurement of low-floor buses by the state government. In its report, the CAG had criticised the Delhi Transport Corporation for purchasing the buses “at rates over and above the justified rate prepared by the technical committee of the corporation”. The CAG report further sa
The CBI’s own record of bringing to book the corrupt, especially when it involves the high and the mighty, is abysmal. The list of cases where the accused have either gone scot-free or are yet to be punished is endless--- the hawala scam, the fodder scam, the telecom scam, the Taj corridor scam, the Tehelka expose and all those disproportionate a
Justice K Kannan of Punjab and Haryana High Court held the court on Sunday to hear a case pertaining to six petitions filed by ex-servicemen against the Haryana Public Service Commission for denying them posts of assistant engineers. To be sure, there is nothing unusual about the case itself. In fact, lakhs of such cases are languishing in courts across the country. No celebrity was involved he
The preparation for Commonwealth Games may leave much to be desired but the legislators belonging to the Congress party are already eyeing the flats being constructed to house the participants. Shoaib Iqbal, member of the legislative assembly from Matia Mahal, led the chorus in the House on Thursday when he demanded that the luxurious flats should be bought by the government and allotted to the
It`s April 1, the Right to Education Act has kicked in and all should turn out rightfully wiser from this All Fools` Day. Or, should they? As with much else in our democracy, there seems to be a world of difference between the act of legislation and the process of implementation. Ask the private schools, in Delhi for instance, that are supposed to reserve 25 percent seats for children from the
India is grandly choosing to give its citizens statutory `rights` over public services that the State should be pr
Politics over Amitabh Bachchan’s appointment as brand ambassador of Gujarat has turned ugly. Apparently upset at the development, the Congress has launched a frontal attack on the film star who was once a close family friend of the Gandhis. But the way it is hounding the man it seems the party is not into the routine game of scoring political points over its rival. Had it no
