In the five years of the Right to Information Act, activists who use it have faced reprisal across the country. OCTOBER 2010 marks the fifth anniversary of the Right to Information (RTI) Act. The Act and its implementation have been described in both administrative circles and civil society as “revolutionary” , “a blow for transparency”, “a check on corrupt practices” and “a people's intervention tool with tremendous impact”. Social activists and...

The fact-finding team set up by the Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) last month to probe allegations of violations of the Forest Rights Act by Posco, the Korean steel major, for its proposed project in Orissa’s Jagatsinghpur district, will visit the site on Friday and Saturday. The team is LED by Meena Gupta, a former secretary of this ministry and also of the tribal affairs one. The other members...

The spotlight on the long-pending amendment to the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, was back when a Congress delegation, LED by general secretaries Rahul Gandhi and Digvijay Singh, extracted a promise from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday that he would bring a Bill to amend the Act in the winter session of Parliament. Emerging from a meeting in Parliament House, Mr. Digvijay Singh said: “The Uttar Pradesh government is misusing the...

Ahead of the visit of the Central team to the Posco site scheduLED for August 27-28, the Jagatsinghpur district officials today held interactions with the villagers and village Forest Rights Act (FRA) committees to explain about the purpose of the visit of the team. Sources said, the district administration has formed seven village level FRA committees at Dhinkia, Gobindpur, Nuagaon, Gadkujang, Polang, Noliasahi and Baynalkanda. The officials are believed to have...

Thousands of farmers from western Uttar Pradesh descended on the capital on Thursday and blocked all key roads leading to Parliament. They were protesting against the Mayawati government for carrying out land acquisition for the Yamuna Expressway project. Though traffic movement in central Delhi areas was affected for a few hours, the protest was peaceful and no untoward incident was reported. Traffic movement was affected at Rajghat, Jawaharlal Nehru Marg,...