--Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) On Sunday (15th December) CHRI made a submission to the Independent People's Tribunal that was hearing people's perceptions about the working of the National Human Rights Commission on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Protection of Human Rights Act, which provides for the establishment of the NHRC to look into complaints of human rights violations suffered by people. Please click here to download the...
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Seven Years of RTI: From Strength to Strength
India's landmark Right to Information Legislation is called the biggest single step since independence to build transparency in governance. However, its remarkable success is owed only to just 0.3 per cent of Indians who file RTI applications. It's anybody's guess as to what would be the impact if even one or two per cent of Indians began to ask tough questions to hold their rulers accountable. It is noteworthy that...
More »40 lakh used their right to information in 2011-12 -Anahita Mukherji
-The Times of India MUMBAI: On the eighth anniversary of India's landmark transparency legislation today, data mined on the Right to Information (RTI) Act shows it is, indeed, India's sunshine law, with an estimated 40 lakh people using the Act during 2011-12, the latest year for which all-India data is available. The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), an independent organisation closely associated with the RTI legislation, data-mined annual reports filed by the...
More »Colonial hangover-Sandeep Joshi
-The Hindu The Sunday Story India's police forces are generally hostile and corrupt. They are also often brutal, as the recent beating of unarmed people in Tarn Tarn and Patna demonstrated. The Indian Police Act of 1861, a colonial relic, needs to be replaced with a law that befits a free country. The former Border Security Force (BSF) Director-General, Prakash Singh, refers to his favourite game of ping pong whenever he has...
More »Timely Army deployment could have checked Assam violence, reveals RTI query-Sandeep Joshi
-The Hindu Home Ministry took three days to request Army for deployment, according to information collected under Right to Information Act The riots that raged in Assam in mid-2012, claiming more than 70 lives and displacing lakhs of people, might not have escalated had the Centre reacted on time to the State’s plea for immediate deployment of the Army in Kokrajhar and Chirang districts, according to information gathered under the Right to...
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