-The Times of India AHMEDABAD: The answer of the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) to an RTI (Right to Information) query has revealed a shocker: Gujarat recorded 55 custodial deaths in 2017. Ahmedabad city topped the chart with 15 deaths in custody — two in police custody and 13 at the Sabarmati central jail. The RTI application — filed by a human rights activist from Mehsana, Kaushik Parmar — also revealed that...
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As Number of Murdered RTI Activists Rises to 67, It Is the Modi Government That Needs to 'Act Rightly' -Venkatesh Nayak
-TheWire.in When conscientious and well-meaning citizens are attacked for "acting rightly", is the government "acting rightly" by not doing enough to safeguard them? Yet another Right to Information (RTI) activist in Gujarat has paid with his life for demanding transparency. On March 9, Nanjibhai Sondarva (35), a resident of Manekvada village in Kotda Sangani taluka of Rajkot district, was allegedly clubbed to death by six people. The deceased’s father has claimed that...
More »100 gram sabhas in Odisha's Kalahandi district to assert rights on bamboo, kendu -Ishan Kukreti
-Down to Earth In Odisha, both these commodities are nationalised, thereby curtailing the rights of the people on them As the harvesting season for bamboo and kendu leaf approaches in Odisha, tension is building between the forest-dependent communities and the forest department. In Kalahandi district, around 100 Gram Sabhas are planning to assert their rights over bamboo and kendu leaf despite legal curtails. “In Kalahandi Jangal Manch meeting on February 28, we decided...
More »Before and after Javed Abidi -Vaishnavi Jayakumar
-The Indian Express India’s disability movement will not be the same again. I wonder if 50 years down the line, India’s disability movement’s timeline will be viewed as before and after Javed Abidi. The unexpected passing away of this colossus a few days back has shaken all — from activists who were his contemporaries to reporters wondering aloud on Twitter about whom to ask for quotes in future coverage of disability. So where...
More »Union Budget 2018-19: An exercise in jugglery of numbers, say civil society groups
-Press Release by National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM) New Delhi: Calling this year’s union budget ‘just an exercise in manipulation of numbers,’ veteran activist Medha Patkar asked, “When the major decisions like the demonetisation and GST are taken between two budgets then what’s the relevance of the Budget?,” at a panel discussion on the analysis of this year’s union budget with a special focus on Handloom, Fisheries, Dalits, Adivasis, Forest,...
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