Days after the government placed the CBI under the category of organisations “exempt” from the RTI Act, the country’s first Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah has “requested” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to let the Central agency remain within the ambit of the transparency Act as “public interest would best be served by keeping these bodies transparent and accountable within the limits of the law”. However, the CBI has defended the move...

Only one contentious issue came up for discussion at Monday's meeting between the government representatives and civil society members of the Joint Drafting Committee on the Lokpal Bill. It was the selection and removal of Lokpal members. The two sides differed on both counts. The government preferred a committee comprising the Prime Minister, the Lok Sabha Speaker, the leaders of both Houses, Leaders of the Opposition of both Houses, the Home...

For decades, the victims of communal and targeted violence have been denied protections of law that the rest of us take for granted. It's time to end this injustice. In a vibrant and mature democracy, there would be no need to have special laws to prosecute the powerful or protect the weak. If a crime takes place, the law would simply take its course. In a country like ours, however, life...

Talks fail; Hazare threatens fast from August 16 The Joint Drafting Committee on the Lokpal Bill ended its deliberations on Tuesday without a common text, and the government has decided to go ahead with its plan of consulting political parties and Chief Ministers on the two different versions before getting the Cabinet to clear a final draft. Expressing “deep disappointment” at what it said was the government's watered down version of a...

The Lokpal is designed to be a comprehensive anti-Corruption institution independent of the government, empowered to effectively investigate Corruption of all public servants. But most of the critical elements in this vision have been rejected. The latest draft report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) on hydrocarbon production sharing contracts and the transfer of oilfields to Reliance is only the latest of the mega scams to surface in...