Stating that Singur and Nandigram have taught lessons to the West Bengal government, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee today demanded from the Centre a new legislation in place of the Land Acquisition Act of 1894. "We have learnt a few lessons from Singur and Nandigram. We must have a new legislation as the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 is out of sync," Bhattacharjee said. "We want a new law which will have issues like...

Bihar's programme of filing RTI applications through a call center is a novel one. The question is whether the model is effiicient enough to be replicated in other states like Karnataka. If you are in Bihar, you can get electronic goods repaired, phone numbers, buy things through call centres — and also file an RTI application. Zafar Hassan has filed two applications in the past two years through call centres,...

Dispur has decided to set up a children welfare trust to adopt a holistic and comprehensive policy for physical and mental wellbeing of every child living in Assam. The trust will be headed by Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi and include personalities like industrialist Ratan Tata as its member. The government will formally float the trust on November 14 on the occasion of Children’s Day. Health and family welfare minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told...

Next month, the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005, one of the most powerful laws enacted in independent India, completes half a decade in the cause of transparent and accountable administration. It enables, on demand, access to information the State and Central governments have in their possession. It empowers Indian citizens to ask for and get specific information, subject to certain norms, from a Public Authority, “thus making its functionaries...

The Punjab government today decided to pay to the farmers the productivity bonus in lieu of the electricity bills paid by them for running agriculture pump sets. The decision was taken at a cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal. The amount equal to the electricity bills paid by the farmers would be given to them as productivity bonus, an official spokesman said here. This decision has been...