Resistance to disclosure is a phenomenon that is confined not only to the executive. here have been instances where the judiciary has also shown that much of intransigence to the Right to Information Act. It is no wonder that the Chief Justice of India S H Kapadia once said at a function that sunlight is a great disinfectant, but too much of it can burn one as well. Interestingly, in June...

-The Hindu   West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee should clarify whether her earlier utterances that there were no Maoists in the State were “correct or wrong,” said Biman Bose, chairman of the State's Left Front Committee here on Sunday, a day after she set a seven-day deadline for the extremists in the Jangalmahal region on her offer of talks on condition that they give up their arms. “They [the Trinamool Congress] had...

-The Hindu   Stating that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's stand on the Maoist situation in the State reeked of “opportunism, duplicity, indecisiveness and vagueness,” Leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly Surya Kanta Mishra said here on Saturday that in the last four months she had done irreparable damage to the situation. Addressing a public rally at Jhargram during the day, Ms. Banerjee said that she had fulfilled her promise of...

-The Hindu   Making no reference to the month-long conditional “ceasefire offer” from the West Bengal leadership of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday gave a seven-day deadline to the Left Wing Extremists in the Jangalmahal region on her offer of “negotiations if you give up your arms.” During her second visit to the Maoist-affected Jangalmahal region after assuming charge as Chief Minister, Ms. Banerjee claimed that...

What began as a few whispers is now a booming drumbeat. Powerful senior ministers are asserting that the Right to Information Act (RTI), till now flaunted as one of the UPA government’s biggest gifts to the aam aadmi, is “transgressing into government functioning”. Similar misgivings are being voiced on another constitutional body that has been in the news lately—the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG). Put together, this has...