West Bengal is likely to simplify restrictive laws on land ownership, making it easier for industrial estates to sell surplus land. The state’s land ceiling laws cap private ownership of land at 24 acres, and there were restrictions on transfer of land held under exemption from the threshold. The new policy, which is expected to be ratified by the state cabinet on Friday, would allow companies to transfer even leasehold land given...
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RTI activist told to pay for info by A Selvaraj
It is common for government agencies to come up with reasons for not supplying information sought under the Right to Information Act (RTI). Now, the state civil supplies department has come up with a googly. Responding to a RTI query, it told the applicant, "pay us money so that we can hire people to find out the information you seek." The applicant, M Thirumani of Padikuppam Road in Anna Nagar, filed...
More »Students discover true worth of RTI by Sweta Dandekar & Barkha Kaul
-DNA Country’s first chief information commissioner (CIC), Wajahat Habibullah, told law and mass communication students about the true strength of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005. He said RTI Act is not a weapon to be used against the government but to strengthen the system, exposing the weaknesses within its functioning. He was speaking at a daylong workshop on ‘RTI and media—Partners for priority’ organised by Symbiosis Institute of Media and...
More »State to pay private schools for BPL admissions by Rageshri Ganguly
The school education department is likely to reimburse Rs 2,607 per child to the private schools of the state for admitting the BPL (below poverty line) children under the Right to Education (RTE) Act. Orders in this regard are expected to be released soon, school education department sources informed. The RTE Act came into effect in the state on March 26, 2011. In the last session almost 1.5 lakh students were...
More »Gujarat 2002 and Modi’s Misdeeds by Anand Teltumbde
Ten years after the killings in Gujarat, Narendra Modi has neither expressed regret nor has he been held accountable for those mass deaths. Where do we go from here? Anand Teltumbde (tanandraj@gmail.com) is a writer and civil rights activist with the Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights, Mumbai. Just thinking of it, a shiver runs down my spine. I had my own brush with how the Hindutva gangs carried out the...
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