A RESEARCHER WORKING on the State of Panchayats Report (SOPR) 2008-09 met Mahangu Madiya in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar district, a dangerous place for gathering data. Madiya’s story was startling. In January, he was given Rs 55 lakh compensation for his land, but the amount is sitting in his bank account. He does not even own a mobile phone. “I am concerned with farming. My land is important to me. What will I...
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Maoists on mind, govt mulls mining law by Nishit Dholabhai
The government is thinking of bringing in a law that would allow the National Investigation Agency to probe cases of illegal mining. The proposal for arming the NIA with this power had come from the Prime Minister’s Office. Sources said the objective was to enable the Centre to break the “mining mafia”. If passed, the proposed legislation will also enable the government to scrap leases of companies engaged in illegal operations, like...
More »Rs 13 cr recovered from scam suspect's relative
Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) sleuths on Tuesday seized Rs 13.05 crore in cash stacked in sacks and boxes from the house of a relative of a scam-accused official in Guwahati. The house, in Assam's main city, is owned by Amjad Hussain, brother-in-law of RH Khan, one of the main accused in the multi-million rupee financial scam in Assam's North Cachar Hills district. Khan, a deputy director in the state social welfare...
More »India doesn't have a law to protect whistleblower
What is a whistleblower protection law? A whistleblower is defined as someone who exposes wrongdoing, fraud, corruption or mismanagement. In many cases, this could be a person who works for the government who would report misconduct within the government or it could be an employee of a private company who reports corrupt practices within the company. The law that a government enacts to protect such persons who help expose corruption...
More »Life term for 3 in Dubey murder case
Three men were on Saturday sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted of murdering National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) engineer Satyendra Dubey, the young whistle-blower who had exposed corruption in a national highway project in Bihar, seven years ago. Mantu Kumar, Udai Kumar and Pinku Ravidas were handed the life sentence by a special CBI court judge Raghvendra Singh, who held them guilty of the murder of the 31-year-old IIT-Kanpur...
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