The Department of Personnel and Training has rejected most of the changes suggested in the government's Draft Rules for the Right to Information Act by the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC). The NAC, therefore, decided on Friday to have a face-to-face consultation with the DoPT before finalising its recommendations on the subject. The NAC had specifically objected to two proposed changes– abating of the proceedings before the Information Commission if...

The Group of Ministers tasked to suggest ways to curb corruption in public life is weighing a constitutional amendment to fast-track the trials of officials indicted for graft. Sources said changes could be incorporated in Article 311 of the Constitution (dealing with dismissal, removal or demotion of government officials) to provide for summary proceedings in cases of grave misdemeanour or blatant corruption. Also under consideration are amendments to the Prevention of Corruption...

A generally beleaguered microfinance industry was eagerly waiting for Yezdi Malegam for deliverance. Any conversation about the microfinance business would end with the expectation that the Malegam committee would deliver a healthy dose of oxygen to the choking microfinance industry. The report was expected to be the panacea for all that ails microfinance in India. The report, which came out on Monday, disappoints not only in its inability to meet these...

New CRZ notification sparks off fears, upsets fisherfolk The new Coastal Zone Regulation (CRZ) 2011 which has opened up construction along the sea has sparked off fears of Mumbai being ringed with high rises and mutating into a ‘desi' Manhattan. It has triggered furious debates on development and upset the fisherfolk who are planning to hit the streets across the country to agitate for better coastal protection. Since 1991 when the first...

NC Saxena , the influential former bureaucrat who is a member of the National Advisory Council, has raised the ineffectiveness of government programmes among tribal people in a paper that will come up for discussion before the Sonia-Gandhi headed council. The government relied on a report by Saxena last year in denying clearance to a large mining project by Vedanta Resources in Orissa’s Niyamgiri hills . This had attracted international...