-The Hindu The government must put the MCA-21 data under scrutiny and bring Transparency in calculating corporate output About a third of non-government non-financial companies in the services sector are not traceable is the finding of a National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) survey for 2016-17 that has just been released. Since such entities could be shell/fake/bogus companies included in the MCA-21 database of “active” companies used for estimating the gross domestic...

-TheWire.in "If free and fair elections are integral to the running of our democracy, the voter has to be provided with a mechanism where the casting of a vote is visible, and apparent to his or her understanding." New Delhi: Members of civil society have released a statement demanding the counting of all VVPAT slips for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Recommending that “the VVPAT slips be recognised as the ballot paper”, the...

-The Hindu Voters need not know the funding source of parties, A-G tells court New Delhi: Voters do not need to know from where political parties get their funds, the government argued in the Supreme Court on Thursday. The court cannot “kill” the electoral bonds scheme for the sake of Transparency, Attorney General K.K. Venugopal said. He argued that the bond was an experiment to eradicate black money and the court should not...

-The Indian Express Concealing the identity of donors in electoral bonds goes against a fundamental tenet of democracy — Transparency Electoral bonds are attracting attention in the run-up to the general elections. These bonds were conceived in 2017 and the necessary legislative changes were made in the Finance Bill of 2017. For example, Section 31 of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1924, was amended and a new Clause (3) was...

-The Hindu SC to hear petitioner next week In a time of deep political polarisation, refusing to comply with the RTI Act seems to be one of the few issues that has united national parties across the ideological spectrum. Despite a June 2013 ruling from the Central Information Commission (CIC) that they fall within the ambit of the Transparency law, parties insist that they cannot be considered public authorities under the Act. Six years...