Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from March, 2016

RTI applications to PSU banks dwindled, rejection rates shot up in 2014-15

By Venkatesh Nayak* Readers may remember the recommendations of the P J Nayak Committee constituted to examine the governance of boards of commercial banks a couple of years ago. This Committee gave its report in May 2014 . One of its findings was that coverage of the public sector banks (PS Banks) under The Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI Act) was hampering their ability to compete with their rivals in the private sector. No data was produced in support of this finding. Ever since, we at CHRI have examined this claim year after year in the light of the Annual Reports released by the Central Information Commission which contain RTI application statistics submitted by these PS Banks under Section 25 of the RTI Act. The Annual Report of the CIC for the year 2014-15 is out. As we wait for the uploading of the e-version of this report on its website, our findings based on a rapid analysis of the RTI statistics of 24 PS Banks is given below. Two years ago we started examining the data f

Discrimination writ large on 50 Dalit youth to gathered learn empowerment skills

By Rajiv Shah  Discrimination is writ large on their face, whether it was distribution of water, entry into the temple, getting haircut from the local barber, or constructing toilets. Around 50 of them had come all the way from different parts of India to be “empowered” at the Dalit Shakti Kendra (DSK), a unique institute about 20 kilometres south of Ahmedabad, set up by Dalit rights activist Martin Macwan more than a decade ago. A few of them, like Babloo from a small village in Dehradun district of Uttarakhand, has faced attacks from dominant castes when they tried entering into the local temple. “We tried doing it by forming a group of 150. We were attacked. Police refused to take complaint. Even today, they threaten me”, he says. Yet another youth hailing from a nearby village in the same district, Dinesh Jonsara, said, entry into the temple, situated in Lakshiyar town, is banned for Dalits even those who helped construct it. “My father was a mason. I helped him build the temple in

Annual Report: Number of RTI applications decline, CIC imposes fewer penalties

By Venkatesh Nayak* The Annual Report of the Central Information Commission (CIC) for the year 2014-15 is out. While the soft copy is not yet uploaded on the CIC’s website, I obtained a hard copy from the office of the CIC on request. Our preliminary findings based on the latest Annual Report in comparison with similar reports of previous years are given below. Trends in RTI statistics reporting: Only 2,030 public authorities under the Government of India registered to submit their RTI returns under Section 25 of The Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI Act) in 2014-15. The most number of public authorities registered for any reporting year was in 2012-13 at 2,333. Of the 2,030 registered public authorities, 75.27% submitted their annual RTI returns to the CIC in 2014-15. The highest percentage of reporting – 89.23% was in the first three months of the implementation of the RTI Act in 2005. However only 938 public authorities had registered themselves with the CIC that year. 2012-13 saw

Cloaking ‘Aadhaar’ with the sanctity of a law on disputable grounds

By Venkatesh Nayak* The Government of India has tabled the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016 in the Lok Sabha. The proposed legislation seeks to give a legal basis for issuing Aadhaar = Unique Identity Number for every person residing in India for at least half the number of days of a 12 month period immediately preceding the date on which he/she seeks enrollment under Aadhaar. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) will be the key institution responsible for implementing this law across the country (except in J&K). Demographic data such as name, date of birth, address and other details along with biometric information such as photo, fingerprints and iris scan will be collected, databased and preserved by the UIDAI for authentication purposes in future. This exercise begun under an executive resolution of the Central Government has databased more than 900 million people already. Interestingly, Clause 9 of t