Three of Pune’s practices under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005 will act as role models for the country. This was decided in the recently concluded chief information commissioner’s (CIC) conference in New Delhi. Special appeal disposal programme, open days at government offices and the unique RTI library at the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) are the three practices, which will be exemplified as role models for the country along...

Five days after Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi accused Mayawati government in UP of mega-scale corruption in the centrally sponsored schemes, union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh has shot off a letter to UP chief minister Mayawati citing a huge scam in the MNREGA scheme in the state. According to sources, Jairam has specifically mentioned seven districts Balrampur, Gonda, Mahoba, Sonbhadra, Sant Kabir Nagar and Mirzapur where central funds have...

-The United Nations   The United Nations independent expert on the right to food cautioned today that smallholder farmers face the risk of exploitation under contract farming arrangements with processing or marketing companies, and recommended mechanisms that could ensure that such agreements are fairer. “Contract farming for its benefits, which I am not denying, nevertheless locks farmers into one segment of the food chain,” said Olivier De Schutter, the Special Rapporteur on the...

Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh wants an urgent CBI inquiry into what he called brazen violation and deliberate embezzlement of MGNREGA funds in Uttar Pradesh. In a strongly worded letter to CM Mayawati — in the run up to the UP polls early next year — Ramesh described the inaction in dealing with the corrupt as a signal by the state to make money by openly flouting all procedures. "And...

Six years after the Right to Information Act was passed by Parliament, the government has made no progress in computerisation of its records, a promise it made in the law itself. Amid growing complaints from departments that most of their time is spent in handling RTIs, the Central Information Commission has now reminded the government to do a status check of the implementation of the RTI Act and computerise all...