A crucial meeting of the National Advisory Council (NAC), which may finalise the draft food bill, will be held Sep 24, informed sources said here Monday. The previous meeting, chaired by NAC chairman Sonia Gandhi, Aug 30 could not finalise the draft bill, which should be sent for the government's consideration, as there was no consensus among the NAC members on whether to confine food security only to people below poverty...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Ringing the winds of change in the new Bihar by Suneha Dutta
Bihar's programme of filing RTI applications through a call center is a novel one. The question is whether the model is effiicient enough to be replicated in other states like Karnataka. If you are in Bihar, you can get electronic goods repaired, phone numbers, buy things through call centres — and also file an RTI application. Zafar Hassan has filed two applications in the past two years through call centres,...
More »CEPA with Japan lacks transparency: Farmer groups
A common platform of several farmers groups, the Indian Coordination Committee of Farmers Movements, has charged the Central government with complete lack of transparency on the implications of the proposed Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement or CEPA with Japan and the inclusion of agriculture on its agenda. "Such EPAs, like other FTAs, go beyond what cannot be negotiated under the WTO and we are openly opposed to agriculture in the WTO, in...
More »Displacement
KEY TRENDS • Section 105 of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, which provides for excluding 13 Central legislation, including Land Acquisition (Mines) Act 1885, Atomic Energy Act, 1962, Railway Act 1989, National Highways Act 1956 and Metro Railways (Construction of Works) Act, 1978, from its purview, has been amended for payment of compensation with rigours $ • The amendments have now...
More »A right and wrongs by V Venkatesan
The RTI Act needs strengthening, but activists oppose the government's proposals as they suspect its intentions. AN Act is usually amended to address certain concerns that come up during its implementation. However, the beneficiaries of the Right to Information Act, 2005, oppose any amendment to the Act, because they suspect the government's intentions. The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) admitted to considering 11 amendments to the Act in a letter to...
More »