With the government readying to introduce a Bill in Parliament to modify the powers of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) to include public-private partnership (PPP) projects, many project managers are close to gagging. The main reason behind why the public sector has not performed, they argue along with several in government, is the fear of the 3Cs — the CBI, the CVC and the CAG. Since almost...

In a development that promises to snowball into a major election issue for the first time, Patna High Court has ordered a CBI probe against Nitish Kumar and his colleagues for alleged financial irregularities. The high court today ordered investigations into irregularities to the tune of Rs 11,412 crore drawn from state treasuries. The amount was drawn between April 1, 2002, and March 31, 2008, by various state departments to...

A full bench of the Central Information Commission headed by Chief Central Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah has recently held that while all proceedings before the Parliamentary Committees (PC) are no doubt held secret, it cannot be stretched to mean that every single item of information, held anywhere, that may, now or in future, become part of the proceedings before the PC, or may be required to be produced before the...

To eliminate misuse and leakages from its flagship rural employment programme, India could introduce biometric-aided identity checks that can be verified remotely. The government’s initiative comes at a time when the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme has been criticized for leakages. It is the government’s largest social sector spending programme with allocation for this fiscal pegged at Rs40,100 crore. The proposal, which has already been submitted to the government for...

Activist Gopal Krishna makes a case that the Unique Identification Number project is a gross violation of fundamental human rights and points out that a similar project/law in Britain is going to be repealed. This is with reference to a privacy invasion project which is relevant to India and all the democratic countries of the world. The very first bill that is to be presented by the UK's new coalition...