-PTI The role of the Urban Development Ministry, responsible for creating infrastructure for the 2010 Commonwealth Games, has come under the scanner of the PAC which has flagged some serious issues regarding delay in getting environmental clearance and extending "undue favour" to a private company in awarding contracts. While responding to Parliament's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) query on the "inordinate delay" in approaching the Environment Ministry for getting clearance, the Urban Development...

Even seven years after the people-friendly Right-To-Information (RTI) Act was passed by Parliament around this time in 2005, people who use this legislation to expose corruption continue to live with fear of being threatened, thrashed and throttled to death in Gujarat. That the road to accessing information from government is still arduous in the Bharatiya Janata party-ruled state became evident once again earlier this week when an RTI activist of Amreli...

-The Times of India One of India's most unusual experiments with citizen participation in governance is set to come to an end on Friday, when central information commissioner (CIC)Shailesh Gandhi retires. Gandhi, a noted Right To Information (RTI) activist from Mumbai, was appointed to the central information commission in 2008. Under the RTI Act, there is a state information commission in every state for its laws, and a central information commission for...

-The Hindu An R.K. Laxman drawing, perceived as showing students in Tamil Nadu agitating against Hindi in 1965 in a poor light, is one of the 10 cartoons recommended for removal from NCERT textbooks by a committee. The cartoon on the anti-Hindi agitation, published in the Class XII Political Science book, angered political parties in Tamil Nadu, with the DMK demanding its removal. While recommending the removal of some “objectionable” cartoons, the six-member...

-The Telegraph A committee set up to go through cartoons used in NCERT textbooks in the wake of a controversy over one involving B.R. Ambedkar is learnt to have supported their use as learning tools but asked for guidelines to choose the right ones. The six-member panel headed by Sukhadeo Thorat, chairperson of the Indian Council of Social Science Research, yesterday submitted its report to Parvin Sinclair, director of the NCERT. A member...