-The Indian Express It doesn’t have sufficient power and independence, and seems unworkable. The absence of an adequately independent and empowered body to investigate and prosecute allegations of corruption, especially relating to the rich and the powerful, has been a longstanding concern in India. The Central Vigilance Commission’s (CVC) relative independence has proved ineffective as it has few resources at its disposal while the CBI, which is relatively empowered, lacks independence —...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Comptroller and Auditor General has constituted a special team to review allocations of at least 623 mines by the Rajasthan government in 2014-15. The report is expected to be finalized in three months. Though it is a regular audit process, the issue has assumed significance after Congress on Wednesday approached the Central Vigilance Commission seeking a CBI probe alleging a Rs 45,000 crore scam in...

-The Indian Express SCOPE seeks list of ‘habitual seekers of queries’ from public sector enterprises, former CIC says existing RTI law does not allow such segregation Central public sector companies are trying to identify people who repeatedly use the Right to Information (RT) route to ferret out information from them. Companies are trawling their records about such people and will match data to draw up a checklist. And they plan to use...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Central Vigilance Commission has started an investigation against senior officials of the commerce ministry for 47 missing files of Special Economic Zones allocated to some of the country's top companies. The SEZ files in question went missing from the ministry after the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) began reviewing the concessional land allotment made to the companies in some of the country's favoured...

-The Hindu The appointments of Vijai Sharma as Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) and K.V. Chowdary as Chief Vigilance Commissioner (CVC), which have been a long time coming, also raise some concerns about the Narendra Modi government’s level of engagement with institutions that form the life breath of Indian democracy. The CIC presides over the Right to Information, crucial to a participatory democracy in making institutions accountable, while the CVC is tasked...