The Centre has asked Maharashtra to “drop” its case against Ilina Sen, the wife of jailed rights activist Binayak Sen, a central government official said today. Ilina was booked for allegedly not informing police about foreign delegates’ participation at a conference organised by the Indian Association for Women’s Studies (IAWS) and the Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Vishwavidyalaya (MGAV) at Wardha in January. The ATS Nagpur unit had noted in an FIR that Form...

A case where request for info on some Budget 2007 notings was rejected by the CBDT, but made available by the Central Information Commission, the Second Appellate Authority under the RTI Act. The Right to Information Act of 2005 is a very important piece of legislation to bring about complete transparency in the functioning of the bureaucracy and thus increase accountability as well as reduce corruption. Since it is a relatively new...

Information on illegal structures in their neighbourhood topped the list of queries asked by citizens, an analysis of RTI queries at an awareness camp showed. Citizens expressed concern at the three-day RTI camp organized by Mahiti Adhikar Manch and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) at Parel that concluded on Friday. "A majority of the 175 participants said that they wanted to file RTI queries related to unauthorized changes made in...

Unique identity card (UID) project, an initiative of the Unique Identification Authority of India, was launched here on Friday. It was initiated by deputy commissioner Rahul Sharma who would be the first person to receive it in the district. The ambitious plan aims to provide a 12-digit identification number which will be stored in a centralized database and linked to the basic demographics and biometric information photograph, ten fingerprints and iris...

Even though the Central Government agreed to link the wages paid under MG-NREGA to the Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labourers (CPIAL), it shied away from paying statutory minimum wages in various states of India. Their logic for this: Lack of clarity on who will bear the extra financial burden—the Centre or the states? A letter from the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to UPA and NAC Chairperson Sonia Gandhi dated 31...