But with dissent notes on 18 items, it may not be a smooth affair

The Abhishek Singhvi-headed Parliamentary Standing Committee will meet on Wednesday to adopt its draft report on the Lokpal Bill but with dissent notes on as many as 18 items appended, members say it is unlikely to be a cordial affair. Thereafter, the draft report is likely to be tabled in Parliament on December 9, before it goes back to the Union Cabinet for approval.

Mamata holds out a threat; Congress shares allies' concern

Even as the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress (TMC), the second largest party in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), threatened to withdraw support at the Centre if the Union government did not reverse the hike in petrol prices, the Congress stepped into the breach to make soothing noises:

New-look programme to be rolled out in 2,000 most backward blocks within a year

As part of a coordinated and aligned initiative, the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council, a re-energised Union Rural Development Ministry and the Planning Commission are working in tandem to make up for the time and money lost due to the underperformance in UPA-II on the government's flagship programme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.

The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) — at the initiative of which the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme was rolled out in UPA-I — is taking a fresh look at how to strengthen it.

The NAC wants the scheme to move from its “relief work mode” to one that would blend “natural resources and labour to build productive assets.” When the NAC meets here on Thursday, the Deep Joshi-headed working group will suggest ways and means of strengthening the capacity of panchayats to implement the scheme more effectively.

The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council may not have officially commented on the government's draft Food Security Bill

Khursheed gets Law, Railways for Dinesh Trivedi; Last reshuffle before the polls, says Manmohan

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made two key changes in his Union Council of Ministers on Tuesday: Jairam Ramesh, whose high-profile tenure as Environment and Forests Minister led to the enforcement of long-neglected environmental norms for major industrial projects, was moved to Rural Development, his

The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) hopes to finalise its Working Group's draft of the Food Security Bill, take the discussion on its Communal Violence (CV) Bill draft further and hold a discussion on the plight of Jarawas in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, when it meets here on Wednesday, sources in the Council toldThe Hindu.

The final version of the Food Security Bill draft,

At a time when civil society groups are playing an adversarial role in relation to the Union government, those civil society members who have been given an institutional role in the government have become pro-active: in the last few days, the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) has written three letters to the government on a range of social sector issues.

The three communications