-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...

-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 The long-pending Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill was passed by the Lok Sabha on Thursday night after Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh assured the House that the measure allowed enough room for State governments to implement it as per their requirements. The Bill is only setting a bottom line for fair compensation, rehabilitation and resettlement in the case of land acquisition and State governments were free to further...

-The Hindu There was a last-minute hiccup in the passage of the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill in the Lok Sabha on Thursday when the Trinamool Congress demanded that the clause mandating private projects to take the consent of 80 per cent of landowners be changed to 100 per cent, as is prevalent in West Bengal. The State, Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh said, could change this provision, but...

The UPA government’s proposed bid to amend the Right to Information (RTI) Act, in order to avoid compliance with the June 3 CIC order bringing records of political parties within RTI’s ambit, is sparking widespread citizen criticism and mobilisation. (Pl read the links below for more info on RTI and the bid to amend it)   An online petition put out by the National Campaign for the People’s Right to Information has...