A Right to Information (RTI) application filed by activist Subhash Chandra Agrawal seeking details to make public the assets and liabilities owned by ministers has thrown up interesting results. The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), moving away from its earlier stand of not making public ministers' assets and liabilities, on Thursday gave over 400 pages of complete details filed by Members of Parliament. According to the RTI report, Minister of State for...
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Protecting whistleblowers
The Bill to protect whistleblowers, introduced in the Lok Sabha, is a belated but welcome move to shield those who stand up, often at great personal risk, for the sake of truth and the public interest. The Public Interest Disclosures and the Protection to Persons Making the Disclosures Bill 2010 is the circuitous and protracted outcome of the Supreme Court's strong pitch for a mechanism to protect whistleblowers. This it...
More »Farmers’ bandh hits western UP
Lucknow : The bandh call by Kisan Sangharsh Samiti (KSS) in the state on Wednesday, received response mainly in districts of Western Uttar Pradesh like Aligarh, Mathura, Agra, Ghaziabad and Gautam Buddha Nagar. Manvir Singh Teotia, who is heading the KSS, has rushed to New Delhi to meet the Prime Minister. The AICC General Secretary Rahul Gandhi may be present at the meeting, said sources. In Etmadpur area of Agra, farmers...
More »Martyrs to transparency by Venkitesh Ramakrishnan
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...
More »Secrecy around Bill by V Venkatesan
The Union Cabinet approves a new Bill to protect whistle-blowers, but there is concern whether its provisions will amount to much. ON March 22, a special court in Patna pronounced three persons guilty in the murder of Satyendra K. Dubey, a civil engineer from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. He was shot dead on November 29, 2003, for blowing the whistle on corrupt practices in the Golden Quadrilateral Project in Bihar....
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