MPs' Expenses controversies in UK

Our press and media has been pre-occupied with with election related news. During the same period, there have been fascinating and dramatic developments in UK. Records obtained with the help of Freedom of Information law and other sources revealed massive misuse of public money by Members of Parliament. 

Daily Telegraph had deployed 10 journalist to probe into records, which revealed blatant misuse of public money by MPs. This is an ongoing political scandal following the disclosure of expenses of British Members of Parliament. It involves the disclosure of widespread alleged misuse of the permitted allowances and expenses claimed by Members of Parliament. There was an attempts by MPs to exempt themselves from Freedom of Information legislation. Ultimately information had to be revealed and was given extensive coverage in press and media. 

There is genuine concern among MPs that Parliament has never been held in lower regard by members of the public. Even MPs who have done nothing wrong are reported to be considering quitting as they are considered "crooks" by the public. 

There are several important lessons for India: 

(A) RTI /FOI law leads to effective public accountability.

(B) Beneficiaries of corrupt practices try to avoid transparency. Transparency is essential to prevent misuse of public money.

(C) Press and media can make good use of information revealed with the help of RTI/FOI laws. It is also their social responsability to educate the readers/audience.

Posted by Dhirendra Krishna on rti4empowerment@yahoogroups.com on 

Sun, May 24, 2009 at 1:26 PM

Eleven RTI activists held for rioting

Viju B, TNN

20 May 2009, 0132 hrs IST,

MUMBAI: It was supposed to be a peaceful meeting with state chief information commissioner Suresh Joshi for addressing the grievances of RTI activists. But 11 prominent RTI activists ended up getting arrested by the Marine Drive police for rioting and forceful entry. 

The RTI activists-Krishna Raj Rao, Gaurang Vora, Mohmmed Afzal, Sunil Ahya, Mukund Parekh, Vijay Chuahan, Sanjay Ghadalia, K N Singh, Ravi Haldipore, Dr Srikant Prabhu and Pramod Kadam met Joshi to apprise him of various issues that had been plaguing the RTI Act, on Tuesday evening. 

Chauhan said he wanted to sing the National Anthem. "Joshi went out of the room after we sang the first line. This is punishable under the Constitution,'' he added. 

They then found out that Joshi had lodged a police complaint. A State Information Commission official said that this was not the way to register a grievance.

Chew on this, RTI brings lost cow home

Chetan Chauhan, Hindustan Times, New Delhi, May 11, 2009

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/Print.aspx?Id=c8e08c1a-78bb-487b-a93b-bc4eb4496b04

Unhappy with the police for failing to act on your complaint? Well, the Right to Information (RTI) Act can come to your rescue.

Gobind Dubey, a resident of north Delhi’s Metro Vihar, was recently surprised to find a couple of policemen at his door. They had Dubey’s stolen cow with them.

All they wanted was for him to withdraw his RTI application.

A few months ago, Dubey had complained to the police that the cow, his only source of income, had been taken away by one Raju Tyagi, a dairy owner.

The police refused to register a case, saying Tyagi had bought the animal and had the documents to prove it.

On a friend’s advice, Dubey filed an RTI application, seeking details of the action taken on his complaint.

“About a week after I filed the application, policemen came to my house with Tyagi and returned my cow,” he said. “Tyagi apologised to me and the police requested me not to pursue the case further.”

About 50 km away in Ghaziabad in UP, Mukesh Kumar, too, has reason to thank the RTI Act.

Kumar, an electrician, had complained to the police that a man had duped him. A cheque for Rs 70,000 — that was owed to Kumar — had bounced.

When no action was taken, he filed an RTI application. Within days, the police asked Kumar to come to Ghaziabad and collect his money. “They just wanted me to give in writing that the issue had been settled,” he said.

Magsaysay award-winner Arvind Kejriwal said these two were true examples of people’s empowerment through the RTI Act. About 75 lakh RTI applications were filed last year. “The law was framed to make public servants accountable to people and it is happening to some extent,” said Kejriwal.

© Copyright 2007 Hindustan Times

RTI Query: Delhi HC Ignored Supreme Court Directive for 20 Years!

Publication: Times Of India Delhi; Date: May 7, 2009; Section: Times City; Page: 7

To sit or not to sit: HC notice out

Abhinav Garg | TNN

New Delhi: Caught napping by a public interest litigation (PIL) that exposed how even after more than 20 years of a Supreme Court directive, Delhi High Court has failed to change its rules that could have allowed accused to sit, rather than stand in trial courts, HC on Wednesday issued the notification.

In 1981, SC had directed all HC’s across the country to change the criminal manuals so that accused can sit while attending trial in courts. But it took a PIL by one Awadh Bihari Kaushik, filed earlier this week through lawyer R K Saini, to get HC administration moving. The PIL relies on an RTI plea filed in HC that revealed that no steps were taken all these years by HC to implement the SC order.

A division bench headed by Chief Justice was informed by the HC administration that a notification has been issued while the bench was hearing the PIL. HC then directed the government to publish the notification in the gazette. It will however, come to force after it is published in the official gazette.The notification says all judges should permit an accused to sit during trial proceedings, making an exception only when a judge approaches his seat to start proceedings.

CA exam answersheets under RTI purview: HC

Publication: Times of India Mumbai; Date: May 1, 2009; Section: Times Nation; Page: 14

CA exam answersheets under RTI purview: HC
New Delhi: Students who fail in chartered accountant exams can find out their mistakes by going through their answersheets as the Delhi HC on Thursday directed the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) to provide a certified copy of the paper to students under the Right to Information Act. Dismissing an ICAI’s plea against a CIC order, the HC said the answersheet cannot be excluded from the purview of the RTI. AGENCIES

Name mole in Indira govt: CIC

Publication: Times of India Mumbai; Date: May 1, 2009; Section: Times Nation; Page: 14

Name mole in Indira govt: CIC
Asks MEA To Lift Veil Over 1971 Indo-Pak War Spy Case By May 6

Himanshi Dhawan | TNN
New Delhi: The Central Information Commission (CIC) has asked the government to reveal the names of the alleged moles in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet during the 1971 Indo-Pak war. The decision came after Delhi-based Anuj Dhar sought details of leaks of information relating to national security by a CIA agent.

Information commissioner Annapurna Dixit has asked the ministry of external affairs (MEA) to provide information by May 6. The decision comes at a time when the CIC has chosen not to disclose the Henderson-Brooks report on the Sino-India war.

The infamous 1971 spy case created a furore after it came to light that a senior minister in the cabinet was allegedly leaking crucial information pertaining to cabinet meetings to America’s CIA. Journalist Seymour Hersh in 1983 in his book The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House alleged that late prime minister Morarji Desai had spied for the CIA setting off a major controversy and inviting strong reactions in India.

Dhar, author of the book, CIA’s Eye on South Asia, that compiles declassified CIA documents related to the case, had sought information on people who leaked information to the CIA.

These include records of a meeting between then external affairs minister Swaran Singh and then US secretary of state William Rodges on October 5, 1972, the names and details of people who were in touch with the CIA and leaked details of the proceedings of the Congress Working Committee, details of destroyed or missing records the MEA had on recurring allegations that a minister betrayed India during the 1971 Indo-Pak war.

Dhar also quoted articles written in the foreign press on US South Asia policy being guided by a “source close to Mrs Gandhi’’.

The ministry had earlier refused to disclose any material on the plea that the request for information or documents is based on reports of foreign governments, newspapers and books which the government does not take cognisance those are unsubstantiated reports.

The MEA added, “Authorities are under obligation to divulge records or information of only those events which have happened within 20 years of the request being made.’’

Dhar argued before the commission that the information was of great historical importance. He held that disclosure would be in public interest.

Is RTI Act to be blamed for ills of Prof Azis, VC, AMU?

Where did the VC Go Wrong?

The greatest culprits, undoubtedly, are those teachers/Aligs, who empanelled a person as the VC of historic AMU, who has very poor academic record, serious charges of plagiarism in researches, financial bunglings, illegally obtained D.Sc. degree and professorship, all alleged by Prof. V.N.S.S. Pillai of Kerala. These charges were made known through media: Indian Express in November 2006, Outlook in April-May 2007, yet the empanelment. This exposed the connivance, immorality etc of both the Aligs and of Prof. Azis. Common people of Aligarh are cursing those who proposed his name and succeeded in empanelling him.

A large number of Aligs do feel that the VC was under pressure from this very lobby to award them with lucrative administrative positions of AMU. This pressure was further mounted after 17 September 2007, when massive upsurge had taken place. Since then, the group has been pushed aside by the VC. This group is also believed to be desperate to get contracts of construction, and supply of uniforms and shoes (to the Proctorial security personnel), computers, air conditioners and for timber auctions etc. Such contracts, reportedly, used to be obtained by a non-teaching employee-AMU Court Member-EC Member, now a builder-property dealer as well, belonging to this very lobby. [One wonders, why does not he activate the Justice Faizanuddin Committee to investigate into the killings and upsurges of April-September 2007? One also wonders why he put the Justice Mathew Report under the carpet of Inamdar Committee, because action on these Committees/ Report will effectively silence the lobby vexing him. Having illegally recruited/ promoted people in the Media Committee is another big, inexcusable sin of the VC. ]

It was this very group, who, in order to keep the VC its puppet, tried to cash in on very genuine grievances of the teachers for promotions. Unfortunately, the VC mishandled the whole situation, and virtually played into their hands. His stooge in the EC and a former fellow-traveler of the abovementioned lobby, acted like a crass goon to disrupt the GBM of AMUTA. This was very unbecoming of a university campus. This episode put the VC in a wrong box. It turned young lecturers angry against the VC, who maintained a proxy cry of making AMU international, while himself having such a poor academic record, for which his credibility remained under question right since beginning. There was no point in:

(a) being reluctant about holding selection committees,

(b) doing away with screening for non substantive promotion of lecturers to senior scale, more so, when he had to remain reluctant about holding selection committees,

All this happened at a time when VCs credibility dipped further down with outrageously expensive renovation and furnishing of his residence by flouting many rules.

The campaign of the RTI Group [www.rtigroup.org] exposed his many other irregularities. Cutting down teachers legitimate vacations, he and his Registrar kept taking frequent long out-station leaves with high travel bills [a total of which probably go above a crore of rupees, within less than two years of their tenure]. All these wrong-doings washed away his remarkable handling of the law and order situation, and few other good works.

Even tactically it was wrong on his part that when he dissociated himself from the lobby which empanelled him, he should have fulfilled all legitimate demands of the common teachers, rather than using his other stooges in the EC to take recourse to intimidations. His talk of upgrading AMU to an international institution was always laughed out, precisely because of his poor academic standing, and his reported lust for money through construction kickbacks, lodge renovation, income tax scam, travel bills etc.

So, none (except perhaps the RTI Act) has to be blamed for whatever is happening with the VC. Mere legal authorities will not help him run the AMU, he needs moral authority as well, and that has vanished with the reports of enquiry against him, regardless of its consequences.

But the VC, in his 60s, must have turned so rigid in his temperament that he will hardly try to mend his ways. Is it too late for him now?? We must watch this space. The Aligs must look within themselves, why do they allow such lobbies to operate among themselves who empanel such a poor, inefficient and corrupt man as the VC of AMU.

Reagrds,

Zafar Khan
H-104, Batla House, New Delhi-25
Source: fdr_amu@yahoogroups.com> Posted on: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 11:48:09 IST
Mr Zafar Khan can be reached at getzafarkhan.AT.com (please replace >.AT with @)