It was due to a civil society struggle that the government only last year removed the bar on outsiders from participating in the social audit of projects executed under its showcase legislation of MGNREGA. Barring Andhra Pradesh, no state has so far implemented this reform. Yet, in its report for the ongoing universal periodic review (UPR) before the UN Human Rights Council, India cited the social audit clause in MGNREGA...
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Tribal NGOs misused grants to make private residences: Ministry-Nidhi Sharma
-The Economic Times At a time when the government is desperately trying to take growth to remote tribal-dominated areas, it has found that a key link in the chain - voluntary organisations - has been malfunctioning. Random surveys, conducted by the tribal affairs ministry, have unearthed how over the years NGOs had been getting grants from the Centre for tribal welfare and the money was being misused to make private residences. The...
More »Neeladri Bhattacharya responds
1. Whether we see the elimination of cartoons from textbooks as involving issues of freedom of expression would depend on how we view the status of images in the text. Surely different genres of texts connote different forms of creativity. Contrary to what Bilgrami thinks, images in most of these NCERT textbooks are not merely ‘illustrations' but are constitutive of the text, shaping the meaning of what is being said....
More »Govt mulls action against babus over non-submission of IPRs
-PTI Irked over non-submission of property details by some bureaucrats, the government is considering strict action, including withholding of annual increment, against the defaulters. The government has already issued repeated reminders to a number of officials of Central Secretariat Service (Under Secretary and above level) seeking their Immovable Property Returns (IPRs). "Despite this, some of them have not submitted IPRs. It has been noted that many of them give details of the returns...
More »CVC's reference to CBI puts PMO under cloud-Rakesh K Singh
-The Pioneer In what could puncture the Government’s defence that there were no irregularities in the allocation of coal blocks when the Coal Ministry was under the charge of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) has specifically asked the CBI to look into the role of Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and the Screening Committee of the Coal Ministry. The CVC has also asked the agency to probe why auction...
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