Saikat Dutta of The Outlook magazine and Vinita Kamte, wife of killed Mumbai police officer Ashok Kamte, are among the seven winners of this year's National RTI Awards, announced on Monday by the Public Cause Research Foundation. The foundation also organised a ceremony to honour the 10 RTI activists who were killed this year. The awards were decided by a jury consisting, among others, of Infosys founder N.R. Narayana Murthy; the former...

Congress President Sonia Gandhi's five-point plan to counter corruption, announced during the recent plenary session of the party and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's offer to appear before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on the spectrum Scam are, on paper, reasonable measures aimed at reversing the toll the series of Scams and controversies have taken on the government. But without concrete action and setting up of mechanisms which can effectively implement counter-corruption...

Lobbyist Niira Radia , who’s in the eye of major storm over her taped telephonic conversations with a wide variety of people, including politicians, corporates and journalists, was on Tuesday grilled by the CBI over her alleged involvement in swinging commercial deals which smacked of a quid pro quo. A three-member CBI team subjected Radia to an intense questioning at her Chhatarpur farmhouse in south Delhi this morning. The interrogation, which...

While children are dying of malnutrition, our leaders are busy comforting the corporate sector   This week’s show of ‘Walk the Talk’ by Shekhar Gupta was the third in a series of episodes that seemed to be dedicated to bringing forth the corporate viewpoint to counter the current environment of mistrust, post Radiagate. While the first two were with Ratan Tata and Deepak Parekh, obvious corporate representatives, it is telling that as...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's offer to face the Public Accounts Committee over spectrum Scam appears to be a last-minute idea to rebuff the perception about UPA being mired in corruption, after Sonia Gandhi made a strong pitch for probity at the plenary on Sunday. After the PM created a buzz with his PAC offer, there was speculation that it was an idea which struck late. The offer for PAC came in...