In one of its shortest hearings in an appeal on capital punishment, the Supreme Court on Tuesday took just 90 minutes to decide the fate of domestic help Surendra Koli, and confirmed his sentence of death by hanging in one of the 16 cases of the brutal killing of children in Nithari in Noida in 2005-06.

Petroleum and natural gas minister S. Jaipal Reddy on Tuesday pledged that the government did not intend to raise petrol and diesel prices despite a steep rise in international crude prices.

The Employees Provident Fund Organisation on Tuesday stuck to its decision to pay interest of 9.5 per cent on provident fund deposits for 2010-11, a one per cent increase over the existing 8.5 per cent, which will benefit around 4.71 crore employees.

Indian space scientists have left it to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to take a “political call” on dumping the contract for allotment of high-value and scarce airwaves to Devas Multimedia Ltd, but have also provided him “potent” particulars which could well send relations between the Congress and the DMK into a tailspin.

The government on Tuesday appeared to have agreed in principle to constitute a joint parliamentary committee to investigate the alleged 2G spectrum allocation scam. Sources said a meeting of the Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh agreed to form such a panel.

The CBI, probing the 2G spectrum scam, on Tuesday questioned seven top officials of different private telecom companies and confronted them with the documents seized by the agency during its searches. Some of the representatives of the telecom companies were also confronted with former telecom minister A. Raja and Shahid Usman Balwa, promoter of Swan Telecom (now Etisalat-DB Telecom Private Limited). More arrests are likely in a day or two.

The Union Cabinet on Tuesday cleared the President’s speech, which will be delivered at the joint session of Parliament on the first day of the Budget Session. The speech is likely to set the government’s agenda and intent on how to tackle corruption.

In the season of scams for UPA-II, which has left the government in deeply troubled waters and fingers being pointed even at the PMO, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has decided to hold a press conference in the capital on Wednesday. He will be addressing editors belonging to the electronic media and undoubtedly be hoping to clear the air on the various scams it has found itself embroiled into.

While the Left has decided to raise the issue of railway safety to fix the Trinamul Congress chief and railway minister Mamata Banerjee during the Budget Session of Parliament, the AIADMK will intensify its attack on the UPA ally, the DMK, on the 2G spectrum scam. The main Opposition BJP plans to demand a discussion on corruption in Parliament.