Veteran Communist leader and former Chief Minister of Kerala, V S Achuthanandan turned 98 on Wednesday.
In what may come as a major relief to citizens, the government has decided to do away with the necessity of filing affidavits from a gazetted officer or a notary for a big chunk of government-related work and instead to promote self-attestation of documents.
Addressing reporters at his residence soon after the meeting ended, Chowdhury said six names came up before the panel for the selection of the two ECs and the names of Sandhu and Kumar were finalised by a majority of members of the high-powered panel.
'Rather than criticising the kind of candidates fielded by political parties from our living rooms, NOTA in a sense implores the electorate to say this by turning up in person at a polling booth to ensure their protest is registered.'
A government that confuses PowerPoints for policy is delaying structural change too much.
The Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission, chaired by Justice B N Srikrishna, has suggested a non-sectoral, principle-based approach to revamp the existing framework.
No government in the past initiated the process of policy making for its next tenure even before going in for elections. Once the Model Code of Conduct is enforced by the Election Commission, should the government of the day refrain from taking an active interest in policy making for the next five years and let that be the function of the new government?, asks A K Bhattacharya.
Ron Somers, founder and CEO of India First Group and the former President of leading business advocacy group US-India Business Council said that when Lok Sabha election results are declared on June 4, "I believe that Narendra Modi will win Parliament by the largest majority ever recorded in the country's history.
Amid long-pending dispute between the UK-based telecom giant Vodafone and the tax authorities in India, Finance Minister's advisor Parthasarathi Shome on Wednesday said the government should not use retrospective amendment of tax laws to raise revenues.
A well-functioning GST will enhance tax compliance and boost growth: IMF
Top Tamil actor Vijay on Friday announced the launch of his political party, Tamizhaga Vetri Kazhagam, and said he will contest the 2026 assembly polls in the state.
The new government that presents the full Budget for 2024-2025 in July should be ready to restructure the way divestment is managed and implemented, proposes A K Bhattacharya.
The development assumes significance as Prime Minister Narendra Modi had last month announced 10 lakh government recruitments in the next 1.5 years.
'No Indian political party functions in a democratic way.'
The legendary Seshan was not keeping good health for the past couple of years and he passed away at about 9.30 pm, a senior police official told PTI.
Leaks of documents are neither new nor limited to particular ministries.
Security of tenure is important for a bureaucrat to work efficiently. There has to be some rationale behind posting a bureaucrat to a particular department, says former cabinet secretary T S R Subramanian
The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved 'Mission Karmayogi', dubbed as the biggest bureaucratic reform initiative, aimed at capacity building of government employees to make them more "creative, proactive, professional and technology-enabled". The core guiding principles of the competency-driven programme will be to support a transition from "rules based to roles based" HR management to prepare the Indian civil servant for the future, according to a government statement.
A bench of justices Sanjiv Khanna, Dipankar Datta and Augustine George Masih told the petitioners, who pointed out that a meeting for the selection of ECs was pre-poned, to file a separate application pointing out the fact.
A tax reforms panel, headed by finance minister's advisor Parthasarathi Shome, is considering moving away from setting fixed tax-collection targets and linking these with the changing economic scenario during the year.
The government is planning to extend the electronic modes of tax payment to its own payments platform, Unified Payments Interface (UPI), credit cards of banks, or even a mobile wallet like Paytm.
The Narendra Modi government is understood to have ruled out changes in the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act in Jammu and Kashmir and favoured its continuation in the present form in the state.
The Tax Administration Reform Commission submitted report to Jaitley in June 2014.
Irom Sharmila with Magsaysay Award winner Sandeep Pandey.
Kharola leads from the front. As a team player, he also uses technology to improve processes whether it is training or assessing metrics, a key trait that would help to improve service quality of the national carrier.
'Let us also not expect that there will be a clean break with the past, much though the new government might like to think about it. In a functional democracy that is neither feasible nor desirable. But basic change it must be,' says Shreekant Sambrani.
Governments need to proactively plan for attracting and retaining the next generation of talent for its civil services, an official report has said.
In four years, the state has had to battle cyclones, two floods, and two epidemiological disasters. If people bring Pinarayi Vijayan back to power, he must have done something right, obsevers Aditi Phadnis.
A robust dispute settlement system would help the government unlock tax revenues, and also aid ease of doing business.
Virtually addressing a joint conference of the CVC and the CBI at Kevadia in Gujarat, Modi said no matter how powerful a person may be, stern action should be taken against those who work against the interest of the nation or its people.
'With vendetta politics as its main plank, the BJP will be looking out for every opportunity to destabilise this Mahagatbandhan government.'
Elections have become a "big budget affair" and holding simultaneous polls to Lok Sabha and state assemblies would result in huge saving to the exchequer, the government said on Thursday.
False and acrimonious debates such as Modi versus Manmohan might allow for victories that are political and partisan. But the real loser is the nation, India and Bharat, notes Arvind Subramanian, former chief economic advisor to the Modi government in its first term.
Policymakers should aspire to restore the pre-Independence environment where the rupee was trusted and used all over South Asia, in Southeast Asia, in West Asia, and in East Africa, suggests Ajay Shah.
India's Planning Commission has 31 divisions and seven attached offices, which include the Unique Identification Authority of India and Independent Evaluation Office.
'It is violation of the Model Code of Conduct.' 'It is a penal offence under the IPC to exert undue influence on voters.' 'Under the election law, it is a corrupt practice.'
Jaitley said the government proposes to establish a National Testing Agency as an autonomous and self-sustained premier testing organisation to conduct all entrance examinations for higher education institutions.
The judiciary, the police, the lawyers and the public will have to know the new laws. It will also endanger settled jurisprudence on the old laws and open up all sorts of minor and major problems that currently do not exist. Whose then was asking for the change? Not the judges or police or lawyers or citizens, points out Aakar Patel.
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