Civil society members of the joint committee on Lokpal will seek a referendum on the points of difference with government representatives including the issue of bringing the prime minister and the higher judiciary under the ambit of the anti-graft ombudsman.
Gearing up for an Opposition attack over FDI during the upcoming Parliament session, the government on Friday asserted that it was ready to face any situation, including a no-confidence motion, even as it was reaching out to political parties to ensure passage of key bills
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday said any move to regulate social networking sites should be made after taking the view of Parliament but maintained that material which would hurt religious sentiments or is defamatory should be checked.
The 700-Mhz spectrum band ranges from 698 Mhz to 806 Mhz and has been identified by the International Telecommunication Union for telecom services.
The Bharatiya Janata Party is gearing up to launch a fresh attack on the ruling United Progressive Alliance at a major news conference on Thursday afternoon. Meanwhile, Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal defended Prime Minister Manmohan Singh over the 2G row, saying irrespective of what the concerned minister says, the PM is not liable for his actions. The Congress Core Committee is scheduled to discuss the spectrum row later in the evening.
The Communist Party of India-Marxist on Thursday said that the Supreme Court order cancelling the 2G spectrum licences is a "strong indictment" of the government and asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to take a call on its fallout as it has exposed the "bluff" on the UPA-II's claims.
Congress spokesperson Jayanthi Natarajan was named a member of the Joint Parliamentary Committee into the 2G spectrum scam after her colleague Abhishek Singhvi recused himself taking the plea that he had appeared for cellular operators in the court as a senior advocate.
"Too many scams are left unpunished. In the last 10 years, there have been some highly sophisticated economic crimes. There is an unfortunate belief that smooth talking the media and using complicated words can get them to bury the truth. I had to examine over 1,600 documents with complicated words just to come up with a simple 41-slides presentation. That is how things have become," Chandrasekhar told rediff.com after a presentation he made in the capital on Friday.
If the prime minister doesn't plan to step down post the FDI fiasco, he should get down to real governance -- and can start by having the numerous clowns in his court shut up, says Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal on Sunday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of buckling under the pressure exerted by Narendra Modi by including him in the party's top decision-making Parliamentary Board, and said the Gujarat chief minister will someday pose a challenge to his own party.
Get acquainted yourself with the bells and whistles that India's cheapest tablet comes with at just Rs 1,730.
The second round of spectrum auction will begin in March after the Cabinet decides on reducing reserve price of 800 MHz band, used for offering CDMA-based mobile services.
The one-man panel that went into the procedures for giving 2G licences between 2001 and 2009 on Monday submitted its report and is understood to have held some officials responsible for improper spectrum allotment.
Canadian firm Research in Motion is installing and testing a new service, to be made available before January 31, which will automatically render lawfully intercepted BlackBerry messenger messages in a format readable by Indian agencies.
In an interview with CNN-IBN, Bharatiya Janata Party president Nitin Gadkari has slammed Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal for questioning the 2G report and rubbished the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh's alleged links with terror. Here are some excerpts from the interview:
Here's what your favourite celebrities are tweeting.
Emphasising on the need for self-regulation on sharing information on the Internet, Sibal said that media needs to realise its role in sharing news, which should 'empower' people and not cause 'disruption'.
The one-member Shivraj Patil committee report, which was made public in its entirety on Thursday, has put in the dock communications ministers and key bureaucrats in the department of telecom since 2001.
It was after a long gap that an aggressive and united Congress took the Bharatiya Janata Party head on in both the Houses of Parliament over the WikiLeaks exposure on the cash-for-vote scam as the party fielded its brightest and the best.
At present, GSM operators such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular earn 10-12 per cent of their revenues from the national roaming services, which amount to Rs 10,000-Rs 13,500 crore.
The ISPs had already made a presentation to telecom minister Kapil Sibal to request his help in such a process if the government did not want to continue with the current ISP regime.
Hyperactive Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal -- busy trying to 'rescue' the UPA government in the 2G scam ever since he took over after Andimuthu Raja resigned in November -- finds himself caught up in another spectrum scam of the Indian Space Research Organisation's gift of 70Mhz at throwaway prices to its former officer in 2005 that is now turning out to be a Rs 2-lakh crore (Rs 2 trillion) scandal.
Amidst the controversy over its figures of revenue loss on account of allocation of 2G spectrum, government auditor, the Comptroller and Auditor General, on Monday said it stood by the report submitted to Parliament late last year.
The all India launch date is still not fixed due to differences between the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and the GSM mobile industry.
The minister had last month said that the guidelines will be out by October 15.
When educated ministers like Kapil Sibal and P Chidambaram are forced to defend the indefensible it shows a certain desperation in the top power structures in the ruling UPA, says Virendra Kapoor.
According to a study, the change in frequency for transmitting mobile signals could cost the telcos over Rs 1 lakh crore (Rs 1 trillion) cumulatively.
Sibal, who is also looking after the telecom ministry, claimed that change of telecom policy by the then communication minister Pramod Mahajan in 1999 from the auction model to the revenue share model eventually led to the first come first serve controversy of 2001.
Telecom sector has seen phenomenal growth over the past decade or so, says the prime minister.
Says tradability will ensure greater economic efficiency & higher revenues for the government.
The government is in negotiations with electronic chip makers for setting up a high-tech facility in India this year, Telecom and IT Minister Kapil Sibal said.
Last week, the 34-year old Deora, a two-time Congress MP from South Mumbai, had taken charge as Minister of State for IT and Communications.
These policies aim to raise revenue of both the sectors to $700 billion over the next eight years.
The telecom regulator had suggested imposition of a price on operators for holding spectrum beyond the contracted limit of 6.2MHz.
With the exit of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader A Raja from the Union government in the wake of the massive telecom scam and President Pratibha Patil accepting his resignation late on Monday evening, Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is likely to table the CAG report on the 2G spectrum controversy in Parliament on Tuesday.
Rajasthan, Assam, Himachal Pradesh and Tripura among states that will set up an institute each.
The ministry wanted to use spectrum in the 700-MHz band for mobile TV services.
Sibal's predecessor Ashwani Kumar had rejected FinMin's plea for conciliation terming it illegal.
The text of Telecom and Communications Minister Kapil Sibal's statement defending Home Minister P Chidambaram on his alleged involvement in the 2G spectrum scam, on behalf of the United Progressive Alliance government
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