Representatives of around 20 civil society organizations and NGOs met the Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley as part of pre-budget consultation on social sector on 12 January, 2016. Immediately after the pre-budget consultation, a press conference was held by some of these organizations to convey the media persons what demands/ suggestions were made.   Subrat Das, Executive Director of Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA, http://www.cbgaindia.org/) informed us that during...

-The Hindu Less than 3 per cent of Indians pay income tax and a significant proportion under-reports taxable income. On December 28, 2015, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas announced the exclusion of high-income households from the LPG subsidy cover. As per the official press release, subsidy would not be available for domestic LPG consumers, if the consumer or his/her spouse had taxable income of more than Rs. 10 lakh for...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Call it ironical or plain bureaucratic secrecy, the government does not want to share the details of appointment of new Chief Information Commissioner RK Mathur. Anjali Bhardwaj of National Campaign for People's Right to Information had filed an application under Right to Information (RTI) Act seeking details of the appointment process including names of people considered, number of applications received, file notings and whether a search committee...

-The Hindu Business Line Says more responses on ‘Free Basics’ than actual Consultation Paper The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has been stumped by the nature of responses it received on its discussion for ‘Differential Pricing for Data Services’. Rather than expressing views around ‘differential pricing for data services’, majority of the responses have centred around comments on Facebook’s ‘Free Basics’ campaign for free internet for all. Not satisfied with such ‘invalid’ answers,...

-The Hindu We need to provide full Internet at prices people can afford, not privilege private platforms. This is where India’s regulatory system has to step in The airwaves, the newspapers and even the online space are now saturated with a Rs. 100 crore campaign proclaiming that Internet connectivity for the Indian poor is a gift from Facebook which a few churlish net neutrality fundamentalists are opposing. In its campaign, Facebook is...