Activist Gopal Krishna makes a case that the Unique Identification Number project is a gross violation of fundamental human rights and points out that a similar project/law in Britain is going to be repealed. This is with reference to a privacy invasion project which is relevant to India and all the democratic countries of the world. The very first bill that is to be presented by the UK's new coalition...

All 10 fingerprints, an iris scan and a photograph of the person will be used for unique identification (UID) of individuals, the cabinet committee on UID decided on Tuesday, giving its in-principle clearance to guidelines for setting up the UID database. In a billion-plus population, a mix of biometric and photographic record is considered necessary to ensure fidelity of information collected in the project. With UID intended to help identify...

Are income-tax returns filed by individual citizens open to public scrutiny under the Right to Information? Yes, says the Central Information Commission. In a controversial December 14 ruling with far-reaching implications, the CIC held that individual assessees could not invoke privacy concerns to prevent an unrelated “third party” from inspecting returns filed with the Income-Tax Department. Sources in the Commission said the ruling must be seen as a trendsetter that could...

After politicians and judges of Supreme Court, now the assets of babus have been prised open to public scrutiny. In a landmark order, the Central Information Commission has said that disclosure of information such as assets of a public servant, routinely collected by the public authority, should be made available to the public under the Right to Information Act. Passing the order in a case involving an officer with the...

The recently enacted Right to Education Act, 2009 has extensively been debated in the media, civil society and academic palaver. Mainstream also intervened in the debate, and to the best of my recollection, published two pieces: first, a rather elaborate one by Muchkund Dubey on September 19, 2009, and thereafter by N.A. Karim on October 3, 2009. While entirely endorsing the views expressed in these two articles and sharing the...