At a time when protest against corruption is making headlines across the country, crusaders for people’s rights are at the receiving end in Bihar. An RTI activist from Rohtas, Ashok Paswan (49), has allegedly received a threat to his life for seeking information on alleged financial irregularities in disbursement of loans to farmers by a nationalised bank in the district. “I received a call on my mobile around 5.30pm on Friday. The...

-The Indian Express   The annual report of the Central Vigilance Commission carrying details of investigation in the multi-crore Commonwealth Games scam is likely to be tabled in the ongoing session of Parliament. Sources said the report, which will have minute details of all probes undertaken by the anti-corruption watchdog between January and December 2010, has been submitted to President Pratibha Patil on June 30. "The report has been given to the President as...

Until about a year ago, the number of Indians who knew the name of Kisan Baburao Hazare, popularly known as Anna Hazare, ran into a few thousand -- small change in a country of a billion people. The former army driver was known for his peculiar experiments of social reform in a village in Maharashtra, in western India. He had received national awards for his social work. By the end of...

The protest leader Anna Hazare appeared to strike a deal with the police early Thursday morning that would enable him to leave a local jail and begin staging a hunger strike against corruption later in the day, according to a close aide and reports in the Indian news media. One of Mr. Hazare’s aides, Kiran Bedi, announced via Twitter that Mr. Hazare had accepted a police offer to limit any...

-The Economic Times   We condemn the killing of Shehla Masood, a public-spirited woman of Bhopal who used the Right to Information (RTI) Act extensively to expose corruption and misgovernance on a range of issues. The state government must bring the culprits to book and investigate any possible links of the crime to public officials whose misconduct was under her investigation. This brings the number of RTI activists killed across the country so...