Political and Social Issues

NDTV India senior editor and prime time anchor Pankaj Pachauri will be shortly joining the Prime
Minister's Office (PMO) as Communications Adviser to the Prime Minister
Currently, Harish Khare is the Media Adviser to the Prime Minister.
The move to improve the PMO's interface with the public through the media comes in the wake of the beating the government

All government higher educational institutions will have to mandatorily follow a standardised accounting system from the 2013 academic session to bring in more transparency, accountability and good governance.
All central institutions, universities under the University Grants Commission, institutions recognised by the All-India Council for Technical Education and the National Council for Teacher Education and schools affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education will have to follow the new accounting system
The government would hold negotiations with private institutions before making the system mandatory for them also.
It has been recommended by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, which was asked by the Ministry last year to suggest a transparent accounting system.
It will define transparently the revenue earned through various sources — tuition fee and other charges, income from consultancy or from intellectual property owned by the institution.

NGO, in a petition that is to be heard by a Supreme Court Bench headed by Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia on Friday, asserted that the date of birth (DOB) given in the matriculation certificate was the only authentic document that could be taken into consideration to establish the DOB of a person.
It said the Defence Ministry's decision treating Army Chief General V.K. Singh's DOB as May 10, 1950, ignoring the matriculation certificate, if allowed to operate, would pose a grave legal and administrative threat to the entire system in all disciplines of the government.

N. Ram stepping down as Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of The Hindu , Business Line , Frontline , and Sportstar .
In consequence, Siddharth Varadarajan, Editor, The Hindu , has succeeded Mr. Ram, with effect from January 19, 2012, as Editor of The Hindu responsible for the selection of news under the Press and Registration of Books (PRB) Act of 1867.
K. Balaji, Managing Director of Kasturi & Sons Ltd., the public limited company that brings out The Hindu group of publications, has succeeded Mr. Ram as Publisher of all our publications.