-Economic and Political Weekly The recent Comptroller and Auditor General's report on the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board and, more broadly, on nuclear safety regulation has highlighted many serious organisational and operational flaws. The report follows on a series of earlier CAG reports that documented cost and time overruns and poor performance at a number of nuclear facilities in the country. On the whole, the CAG reports offer a powerful indictment of...

-The Hindu In an atmosphere of mistrust of the government, only an independent safety regulatory mechanism can counter the scaremongering against civilian nuclear power I work at an institution funded by the Department of Atomic Energy (which, however, does no nuclear research: the DAE funds a wide variety of institutions and areas in science). About a year ago, I had an e-mail from a journalist who wondered why scientists (including colleagues at...

-The Times of India   A letter from the office of India's Central Information Commission to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently raises serious concerns over two proposals to amend the Right to Information Act through the Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority (NSRA) Bill 2011, which was introduced in the Lok Sabha last September. The first amendment seeks to exempt sensitive information on nuclear radiation safety issues and commercially sensitive information on technology holders from...

-The Times of India   Terming exemptions to the RTI Act introduced through the proposed Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority (NSRA) bill as "regressive", information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi and legal luminary Fali Nariman have urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to reconsider the amendments in the interest of transparency. Nariman said the amendments were "unnecessary" and against the letter and spirit of the Act. "I am distressed to hear that the government of India proposes...

The government's zero transparency enabled Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority (NSRA) Bill has got thumbs down from a Parliamentary standing committee. The Atomic Energy Department had introduced NSRA Bill for setting up independent nuclear safety watchdog in Parliament last year with specific clauses limiting the applicability of the Right To Information (RTI) Act, the government's first such move. The bill propose to incorporate additional proviso in section 8 --- listing exempted clauses ---...