-The Hindu     While the legitimacy of political parties depends on their acceptance of financial transparency under the RTI Act, their internal decision-making processes should be left alone The Central Information Commission (CIC) decision declaring political parties as public authorities under the Right to Information Act has again pit the political class against the people. Political parties have increasingly lost legitimacy due to opaque financing, cultivation of individuals with a criminal background, subversion of...

-IANS Shimla: The hydropower projects in Himachal Pradesh -- in private and public sectors -- are not only gobbling up forests but also damaging natural resources, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has found. The compensatory afforestation by the state is highly deficient as 58 percent of the test-checked hydropower projects reported no afforestation at all, the CAG said in its recent report. It pointed out that lack of re-greening of...

-The Times of India BHOPAL: There is a need for creating positive and empowering opportunities for children living with disabilities. We need to change perception and negative assumptions on disabilities and on people living with disabilities, feels the UNICEF. The State of World's Children 2013 UNICEF's global report focuses this year on the issue of children with disabilities. The report brings out the challenges by children with disabilities. A child with...

-Frontline Despite the negative observations and criticisms, there is a strong case for MGNREGS works to be continued even in States with high per capita incomes. Hisar and Fatehabad: CONTRARY to general opinion, demand for work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) is high in Haryana. Contrary also to the views in recent discussion papers, one of them commissioned by the Commission for Agricultural Cost and Prices...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: BJP leader and cricket administrator Arun Jaitley on Tuesday said the Central Information Commission (CIC) ruling bringing political parties within the ambit of Right to Information (RTI) Act was per se not wrong as long as it applied to their funding. However, he was quick to introduce caveats. "The CIC logic behind applying RTI Act to political parties is that they are given land at concessional...