Activists fear that the government’s move to exempt the CBI from the Right to Information Act could have ulterior motives Kiran Bedi is convinced that the UPA government’s reluctance to give the proposed citizen’s ombudsman, the Lokpal, control of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the country’s premier investigation agency, is due to skeletons that lie buried deep in the agency’s cupboards.   The day Parliament was to discuss the Lokpal Bill,...

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance finds the UID project to be “conceptualised with no clarity” and “directionless”. THE Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance has dealt a body blow to the Unique Identification (UID) project. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was set up under the Planning Commission by an executive order on January 28, 2009. The scheme involves the collection of demographic and biometric information to issue ID numbers to...

In a move that would usher in greater transparency, the Central Information Commission (CIC) ordered that legal opinion sought internally by the government can be made public.   The decision is also significant because it could compound the political problems of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), which is impacted by a series of allegations of corruption, some of which have been revealed through filing of queries under Right to Information (RTI). The...

The United Progressive Alliance government's decision to challenge the Karnataka High Court's ruling on payment of minimum wages to workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act came under attack from the Central Employment Guarantee Council (CEGC), the body that governs the programme. And Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh has warned Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the “atmospherics associated with filing of a special leave petition [in...

The setting aside of 50% of seats in the proposed Lokpal for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, women and minorities, triggered a sharp debate within parties today around a central, normative question: should social diversity, especially inclusion of minorities, weigh in an empowered body to “fight corruption?”   While the BJP has opposed it and Team Anna, caught off-guard on a sensitive political issue, has declined to comment, legal experts...