Right to Information (RTI) activist Santosh Daundkar on Tuesday gave a written complaint to the Maharashtra Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) against State Information Commissioner Ramanand Tiwari in connection with the Adarsh Housing Society scam. Mr. Daundkar has requested the ACB to register an FIR against Mr. Tiwari, former Principal Secretary, Urban Development; MLC Kanhaiyalal Gidwani and R.C. Thakur, chief promoter of Adarsh, for violations for law. In his complaint, supported by annexures of...

Several newspapers and TV channels, some of them among India’s biggest, have claimed credit for exposing the Adarsh society scam in which the who’s who of India’s defense and political establishment are involved. The scam exposes the nexus between bureaucrats, politicians and unscrupulous defense service officers. Obviously it wouldn’t be anyone’s ‘exclusive’ if so many newspapers and channels broke the news. Or else there would be one journalist who reported...

There was a time when Kismati Jaiswal's house at Mandala, Mankhurd, would be demolished thrice a week. Each time, she would have nowhere to go with her children. Hundreds like Ms. Jaiswal, from Mumbai's slum pockets, gathered on Azad Maidan on Wednesday for a protest led by social activist Medha Patkar against the Adarsh Housing Society and other land scams in the city. “No one does anything to the powerful. For...

The Mumbai Collector had, in a letter to the Defence Estates Officer, Mumbai Circle, dated July 12, 2004, denied that the government of Maharashtra allotted any land to the Adarsh Cooperative Housing Society in Colaba. Records obtained using the Right to Information (RTI) Act by the National Alliance of Peoples' Movements (NAPM), which were released on Monday by Ms. Medha Patkar, Simpreet Singh and other activists, show that the Collector accorded...

KEY TRENDS    • The total number of civilians killed and injured during police firing in 2016 was 92 and 351, respectively. The total number of civilians killed and injured during police lathi-charge in 2016 was 35 and 759, respectively #$   • In 2015, the NCRB recorded over 73 lakh complaints of cognizable crimes. Cognizable crimes are relatively serious offences for which police officers do not need a warrant from the magistrate to investigate, such...