One of the salient features of the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act (2005) is that there are provisions in it to ensure transparency and accountability. Section 17(2) of the MGNREGA says that the gram sabha shall conduct regular social audits of all the projects under the scheme taken up within the gram panchayat (GP). In addition to that, Section 17(3) of the MGNREGA states that the GP shall make...

-The Hindu Telangana’s experience is instructive The institutionalisation of “social audits” to ensure implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) has been challenging. Since being included in the 2005 Act at the behest of social movements, social audits have been ineffective in most parts of the country due to government indifference. So far, 26 States have created social audit units (SAUs), but the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG’s) detailed guidelines...

-PTI New Delhi: The Central Information Commission has directed the Bureau of Immigration, an agency exempted from RTI Act disclosures, to give a person details of his travel as he needed it for defence in penal proceedings that landed him in jail. The CIC underlined that any impediment to a person's self-defence would be a breach of human rights. The case pertains to RTI applicant M. Dinesh, who had sought information related to...

-The Hindu Not conducted hearings: RTI reply The State commission to ensure delivery of public services has been inactive since its inception in 2015, an RTI reply by the West Bengal government has revealed. The West Bengal Right to Public Service Commission has not conducted any hearing since its inception and is unable to provide any information about it through RTI, an activist claimed. The RTI queries were filed by Kolkata-based Biswanath Goswami. The...

-Hindustan Times A 6% fall between 2015-16 and 2016-17 was reported in RTI applications filed with the 1,950 public authorities of the Central government, which receives maximum information applications followed by Maharashtra and Karnataka. The right to information law meant to empower Indians and bring transparency in governance appeared to be losing steam with the number of queries going down mainly because of stone-walling of information by officials and slow disposal of...