-Kafila.org This fact-finding exercise was coordinated by the CENTRE FOR POLICY ANALYSIS. Team members were the human rights activist and former civil servant Harsh Mander; former Director-General of the Border Security Force, E N Rammohan; Professor Kamal Mitra Chenoy of Jawaharlal Nehru University; National Integration Council member John Dayal; senior journalist Sukumar Muralidharan and CPA Director and senior editor Seema Mustafa. Introduction and Overview The first impression of the Muzaffarnagar countryside, now green...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Let's All Come To The Party-Anjali Bhardwaj, Amrita Johri and Shekhar Singh
-Outlook Transparency promotes democracy, more the reason for political parties to come under RTI Act's purview There was great public outrage when legislators in Mumbai beat up an assistant police inspector because he stopped an MLA's car for speeding on the Bandra-Worli sealink. The sentiment was: What arrogance! How can lawmakers have so little respect for the laws they themselves made? However, the amendment in Parliament aimed at removing political parties...
More »Not all black and white-Ruchi Gupta
-The Hindu Political parties have acted as judge, jury, supplicant and advocate in their move to amend the RTI Act and remove themselves from its purview. Their rhetoric on transparency sounds more hollow now than ever. The RTI Act provides a regime of consummate transparency of "public authorities". Instead of specifying information to be disclosed, the Act mandates 100 per cent transparency subject only to a tightly defined list of exclusions under...
More »Government has not come back to us, says CIC -Bindu Shajan Perappadan and Mohammad Ali
-The Hindu In June, the CIC ruled that political parties should come within the ambit of the Right to Information Act In a landmark judgment, in June this year, the Central Information Commission (CIC) ruled that political parties should come within the ambit of the Right to Information Act. The CIC order noted: "We have no hesitation in concluding that INC/AICC, BJP, CPI(M), CPI, NCP and BSP have been substantially financed by the...
More »When someone moves your cheese -Maja Daruwala and Venkatesh Nayak
-The Hindu Unlike many countries that have passed laws to protect citizens' privacy, the Indian state is collecting more and more information about private individuals under various pretexts and restricting their right to access their own information Does a serving employee of a premier intelligence agency have the right to inspect his own biodata which that agency handed over to another public authority? Then again, does a former employee of that agency...
More »