Even five years after the enactment of the pioneering Right to Information Act (RTI), penalties for delays in providing what has been sought under the law are imposed in less than 4% of the cases, an independent audit shows. The Act, which empowers citizens to demand information from the government, provides for the imposition of penalties by the Central or State Information Commission in case of delays without reasonable cause. The landmark...
More »SEARCH RESULT
NAC questions govt's draft RTI rules
The National Advisory Council (NAC), headed by Sonia Gandhi, has sought a reply from the Centre on a report by its working group on transparency. The report says the Right to Information (RTI) rules are against the basic spirit of the law drafted by the NAC in its first avatar. The report prepared by Aruna Roy, a council member, had highlighted that RTI rules fail to address several lacunas in the...
More »Fear of Freedom by Ruchi Gupta
So why is the UPA hell-bent on killing its unique success story: the NREGA? Here's the inside narrative of the conspiracy. It took 47 days of a protest sit-in at Jaipur to make the state budge(1). It's notable that the objective of this protracted protest was not to coerce the Rajasthan government for an extra share of the state's resources, but to hold the government accountable to the Constitution and its...
More »Sibal ignored other scenarios in CAG report by Sandeep Joshi
Also failed to notice how his predecessor misled the Prime Minister Communications and IT Minister Kapil Sibal might have termed the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India (CAG)'s calculation of loss to the exchequer from underpricing of 2G spectrum “utterly erroneous,” but he has completely ignored other scenarios presented by the auditor where new operators made crores by selling their stakes to global telecom giants or were themselves ready to pay more...
More »Government's commitment to food security questioned by Gargi Parsai
Right to Food Campaign demands a universal PDS “It is a dishonest proposal of the government” The Right of Food Campaign has charged the Central government with lack of commitment in providing food and nutrition security to citizens with its reported decision to revise the issue prices of wheat and rice for the Above Poverty Line (APL) category of beneficiaries in the Public Distribution System (PDS). “This is the first step to finish...
More »