Living overseas for education, employment or other reasons, Indians abroad find it difficult to use the Right to Information (RTI) Act due to the cumbersome fee-payment process.   'Even after five years of the RTI Act, Indian citizens living abroad are unable to use it effectively because of a cumbersome fee payment system. The Indian government has not framed any rules or procedures for the payment of RTI fee in foreign currency...

A CBI probe has indicted a former chairman of India’s technical education regulator for approving increased student intake by a private engineering college 10 years ago despite the institution lacking adequate infrastructure. The indictment of R. Natarajan comes days after the agency had nailed the now-suspended All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) chairman, R.A. Yadav, in another corruption case. Natarajan was head of the AICTE when the regulator allowed the Chennai-based...

If home minister P Chidambaram’s recent letter to West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is any indication, it has taken the Union home ministry seven years to realise that arming civilians to fight Naxalites is a bad idea. How much longer will it take for them to realise that the current paramilitary-based approach in Chhattisgarh is similarly bound to fail? From 2003 onwards, the home ministry has followed a policy of...

The CBI's record in the Jain hawala case was disappointing. But there are powerful elements in favour of unravelling the truth in the 2G scam. On December 16, 2010, the Supreme Court (Justices G.S. Singhvi and Asok Kumar Ganguly, ) ordered a comprehensive and thorough investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate into what has become notorious as “the 2G scam.” The investigation, into spectrum allocation from...

The CBI today raided about 10 premises in the National Capital Region after it registered a fresh FIR in connection with its probe into the alleged multi-crore Commonwealth Games overlays scam. The raids come a day after the agency questioned Commonwealth Games Organising Committee chief Suresh Kalmadi. Official sources said the CBI registered the FIR, the fourth in the case, yesterday in connection with the overlays contracts given out to four firms....