-Kafila.org This fact-finding exercise was coordinated by the CENTRE FOR POLICY ANALYSIS. Team members were the human rights activist and former civil servant Harsh Mander; former Director-General of the Border Security Force, E N Rammohan; Professor Kamal Mitra Chenoy of Jawaharlal Nehru University; National Integration Council member John Dayal; senior journalist Sukumar Muralidharan and CPA Director and senior editor Seema Mustafa. Introduction and Overview The first impression of the Muzaffarnagar countryside, now green...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday ushered in a fresh dose of electoral reforms by ruling that no one can contest elections without making a full and honest disclosure about his/her assets and educational and criminal antecedents. Curbing the practice among candidates to leave columns demanding information blank in the affidavits filed along with nomination papers, the court authorized returning officers to demand relevant details and reject...

-Outlook Transparency promotes democracy, more the reason for political parties to come under RTI Act's purview There was great public outrage when legislators in Mumbai beat up an assistant police inspector because he stopped an MLA's car for speeding on the Bandra-Worli sealink. The sentiment was: What arrogance! How can lawmakers have so little respect for the laws they themselves made? How­ever, the amendment in Parliament aimed at removing political parties...

-The Hindu     Only the ‘principal offence' in an FIR gets into NCRB data The National Crime Records Bureau, India's official source of crime data, is systematically undercounting virtually every crime in India on account of a statistical shortcoming, The Hindu has learnt. The December 16 gang rape, which prompted much examination of data on sexual assault in the country, will not even figure in NCRB data on rape owing to this statistical flaw. The...

-MoneyLife.in The CIC remarked that it was a sad reflection on two of the most important offices in India if the knowledge of where the information is held is not available in both places. This is the 172nd in a series of important judgements given by former Central Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi that can be used or quoted in an RTI application The Central Information Commission (CIC), while allowing an appeal, directed...