By Our Representative The day Prime Minister Narendra Modi touched New York, September 26, an important development which missed everyone’s attention took place. While the UN Human Rights Council urged all member-states to adopt a resolution for ushering in a pluralistic civil society, India decided to dissociate itself from any such move. The resolution got more than 66 co-sponsors, and it asks the UN High Commissioner to prepare “a compilation of practical recommendations for the creation and maintenance of a safe and enabling environment for civil society.”

By Our Representative Ever imagined a top Government of India-appointed committee walking out of a public hearing organized by it to consult influential groups on an important policy issue? This is what happened on September 27 in Karnataka, where the High Level Committee headed by TSR Subramanian, former Union Cabinet Secretary, constituted by the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests and Climate Change to review environment, pollution control and forest conservation laws, at Vikas Soudha, the high security office complex of the Government of Karnataka.

By Our Representative A team of social activists, who visited some of the strife-torn areas of Vadodara, Gujarat’s third big city, on September 27-28, 2014, have taken strong exception to the “role of the police, particularly plainclothes cops, also known as D staff”, during the communal violence which has been continuing in sensitive areas for the last several days. Claiming that they decided to make an on-the-spot inquiry “on the request of the affected people”, the social activists, in a faxed message to E Radhakrishnan, city police commissioner, said, “The police should have prevented violence and arrested those who undertake violence”, but this has not happened.

Rekha with one of her brothers By Our Representative In what was described by the organizers as a “glaring example” of how Gujarat’s powerful rulers have been treating victims of the 2002 riots belonging to the Hindu community, the Dalit Hakk Rakshak Manch (DHRM) presented at a public hearing at Gujarat Vidyapeeth, Ahmedabad, a 22-year-old girl Rekha, who has been living as a destitute ever since the gruesome incident took place in which her house was burnt. While Rekha, who was asked to speak, sobbed even before she could tell her sorrowful tale for 12 long years and withdrew, a DHRM volunteer said, “She lost her parents, and was forced to take care of four siblings.”

By Venkatesh Nayak* After agonizing last week over the Madras High Court’s judgment and the reckless exercise of the rule-making power by some competent authorities, it would be nice recall three decisions where the adjudicating authorities have done just the opposite of what I had lamented (click HERE and HERE to read) – they have done more than raise a finger over some of the retrograde rules made under the RTI laws in India. First about the Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) High Court, which directed the state government to revisit its RTI rules. Thanks to the fervent efforts of well-known RTI advocate and lawyer BR Manhas, who is based in Jammu, the J&K High Court recently directed the J&K government to reconsider its decision to repeal the RTI rules it notified in 2010. Under a peculiar constitutional arrangement, the Central Right to Information Act, 2005, like several other laws, does not extend in its application to the state of J&K. So, in 2009 the state legislature ...

Jaspara sarpanch Shaktisinh Gohil addressing rural activists By Our Representative As previously planned, villagers from Mithi Virdi-Jaspara region of Bhavnagar district in Gujarat on Sunday took part in a well-attended meeting against the proposed 6,000 MW nuclear power plant on 777 hactares (ha) land. The meeting, said a joint statement issued by the Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti and the Bhavnagar Gram Bachao Andolan, “marked Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US, where he was expected to agree on an administrative deal to implement the Early Works Agreement signed in 2012 between the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) and the USA’s Westinghouse Electric Corporation.”

By Our Representative Tens of Gujarat adivasis, threatened displacement from their Narmada resettlement site on the basis of the town planning Act for triggering industrial and urban development, sat on dharna on September 28, 2014 following clear indications that the promised meeting with the  district collector, Narmada, would not take place, as promised, for settling their grievances. The meeting was to take place to discuss the implications of the notices being given to the resettled Narmada oustees. "When a team of 15 oustees reached Rajpipla headquarters, they found that the collector was transferred overnight, and hence no dialogue was possible", the anti-dam Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) said in a statement.

By Our Representative World’s top rating agency Standard & Poor may have lifted India's rating outlook to 'stable' from 'negative', with claims that this shows it acknowledges efforts by the Narendra Modi government to maintain fiscal discipline while reviving the economy and drumming up investment, influential British journal “The Economist” believes not enough has yet been done, and the new government’s “modest policies” will not bring back to nine per cent growth. The commentary comes when Modi is in the US, the stocks have returned following a three-day losing streak and the rupee showing signs of strengthening.

Villagers' protest public hearing on N-plant in March 2013 By Our Representative While Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in the US and his supporting NRIs are chanting “Modi, Modi”, back home in Gujarat, tens of villages surrounding the proposed site for the 6,000 MW nuclear power plant are set to stage a major protest rally. To be held in the Mithi-Virdi-Jaspara region of Bhavnagar district of Gujarat on April 28, during the protest, when Modi will have intense discussions in the White House, the anti-nuclear campaigners are likely to insist that the Early Works Agreement signed in 2012 between Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NCPCIL) and Westinghouse Electric Corporation for the project be scrapped.

A rally in Mahan protesting against forest land allocation By Our Representative In a major ruling, National Green Tribunal (NGT), India’s quasi-judicial environmental watchdog with powers of a High Court, has declared that the forest clearance granted to Essar and Hindalco’s Mahan Coal Ltd are invalid. This follows the Supreme Court order to de-allocate 214 coal blocks. The NGT’s decision is in response to a petition filed by members of Mahan Sangharsh Samiti (MSS), a people’s organisaion, which challenged the coal mine’s forest clearance. According to Greenpeace India’s estimate, the project would have led to the loss of approximately 5 lakh trees and affected the livelihoods of over 50,000 people in 54 villages of Mahan forests in Madhya Pradesh.

By Venkatesh Nayak* On September 17, the Madras High Court held that a person seeking information under the right to information (RTI) Act cannot exercise the power without revealing why he or she wants the information. However, the High Court did a suo motu review of this judgement on September 23, and deleted two paras (20-21) of its judgement. While passing its order on the suo motu review motion, the Court held as follows: “In the said order dated September 17, 2014, we have made certain general observations in paragraphs 20 and 21, stating that the RTI application should contain bare minimum details or reasons for which the information is sought for. However, the said general observations were made without noticing Section 6(2) of the RTI Act, 2005… “Therefore it is evident that a person seeking information is not required to give any reason for requesting such information. Hence, the general observations made in paragraphs 20 and 21 of the said order, dated September 17 is an err...

By Our Representative A public meeting, “Minorities under Attack”, has been proposed for September 27 at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi, day on which Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address UN General Assembly. To be held in afternoon, the meeting will see the release of a US NRI sponsored report critical of 100 days of Modi, and those addressing it include Manish Tiwari of the Congress, Ali Anwar of Janata Dal (United), Kunwar Danish of Janata Dal (Secular), CPI’s Amarjeet Kaur, bureaucrat-turned-activist Harsh Mander, ex-Planning Commission member Syeda Hameed, anti-Modi campaigner Shabnam Hashmir, Dalit rights activist Paul Divakar, and Archbishop Anil Jt Couto. Muslim and Christian groups, apart from some human rights NGOs, will support the meeting.

By Our Representative The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), Delhi, and Police Reforms Watch (PRW), Mumbai, will be launching an eighteen-day campaign on September 26 in order to “catalyze” voters in Maharashtra, and especially in the city of Mumbai, to “vote for a representative and a party that commits to and is vested in better policing in the state.” In a statement, the two advocacy groups have said, this is being done ahead of the state elections, scheduled on October 15, in order to “blow the whistle for police reforms in Maharashtra.”

A 2012 demonstration against N-plant in Tamil Nadu By Our Representative The Human Rights Watch (HRW) has strongly opposed “continued efforts” by government authorities in India to use the sedition law against activists and protesters. While the latest incident relates to immigration officials on September 16, 2014 preventing environmental activist SP Udayakumar from traveling out of the country because of sedition cases filed against him for leading protests at the Kudankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu, there is enough evidence why Parliament should act quickly to repeal the colonial-era sedition law, repeatedly misused to harass activists and protesters, it said.

By Our Representative With Navratri festival all set to begin in Gujarat, several civil rights groups and individual activists of Gujarat have come together to strongly protest the efforts by certain “extremist” forces to create an atmosphere of communal hatred in Gujarat in the name of fighting Love Jihad, saying, the essence of the whole exercise of these forces is to consider women as property of a particular community by considering Navaratri as the private property of a particular Hindutva group. In a strongly-worded letter to Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel, they have urged upon her to immediately put a brake on their “vicious propaganda.”

By Rajiv Shah*  The new data released by the Census of India on identifying households which have individuals who are “seeking” or are “available for jobs” – a phraseology, apparently, used for identifying households without jobs – has found huge intra-state variations in Gujarat. The data, released on September 23, 2014, show that while in Surat there are just six per cent of households which have someone who is jobless, in the neighbouring tribal districts the situation is many times worse. Thus, in the Dahod district, a whopping 28 per cent of households have someone seeking job, followed by Narmada (24 per cent), Panchmahals (21 per cent), the Dangs (18 per cent) and Valsad (18 per cent). What is particularly shocking is that a few of the “developed” districts of Central Gujarat have higher incidence of joblessness than the districts in Saurashtra-Kutch, which have long been regarded as “backward” and “neglected.” Thus, in Kheda and Anand districts there are 14 per cent househo...

By Venkatesh Nayak* The RTI fraternity is abuzz with heated discussions around the recent judgment of the Madras High Court holding that a citizen must explain his/her reasons for seeking information under the Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI Act) . Whether the Court wanted this norm to apply to people seeking information from its Registry or from all public authorities covered by the RTI Act is not clear. However, the Court’s Cause List for 23rd September listed this matter for suo motu review by the Court. I thank renowned RTI activist C J Karira for alerting me to this development. There are news reports today that some offending portions of the judgment have been deleted. However the Court’s website continues to display the text of the 17th September judgment without any changes (1st attachment). This is not an isolated trend. The Registry of the Madras High Court has been curtailing the transparency regime bit by bit. Madras High Court amended RTI Fee Rules in a retrograde man...

Cremation with main gates remaining closed for Dalits  By Our Representative Dalits of a village in Godhra taluka of Gujarat are up in arm against a gruesome incident in which members of the dominant caste refused to allow them to cremate Nanabhai Kohyabhai Vankar, who died at the age of 75 on September 19, 2014 morning. Pointing out that this has not happened for the first time, Manubhai Rohit, who along with a group of Dalit activists represented to district collector, Panchmahals district, P Bharathi, said, “The cremation ground was constructed from the grant of Prabhatsinh Chauhan, who represented the area in the Gujarat state assembly.”

By Our Representative The newly-formed Ghadar Alliance, a US-based educational watchdog coalition created by activist-scholars calling themselves “concerned citizens”, has released a comprehensive 100-day report of Modi saying they point towards an “emerging disaster” waiting to happen in India on issues of human rights. Titled Fast Track to Troubling Times , the report has been released even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi prepares for his first visit to the US. Modi’s US tour begins on September 26.

By Our Representative A few senior Dalit activists, social workers and scholars, who gathered in for a workshop in Ahmedabad to discuss how to “annihilate” casteism from India a few days back, are learnt to have reached an atypical conclusion, which may not go down well with politicians: Drastically reform the present entitlement-based reservation policy, continuing in the country for decades. The activists agreed that while the reservation policy has helped create a new middle class among the Dalits, large sections of oppressed communities have remained outside overall development that has taken place in India.

Reproduced below are minutes of a meeting on Annihilation of Caste in Ahmedabad on September 12-13, 2014, where participants* — senior academics, activists, scholars and scribes — expressed concern over dilution of Dalit identity because of overt stress on entitlement-based policies. The meeting advocated for alternative strategy based on vulnerability index, in which manual scavengers, especially women, are the chief focus of attention: *** The one and half day meeting on moving from caste based discrimination to annihilation of caste, taking cue from the famous treatise of Dr BR Ambedkar, began with a note of concern that Dalit identity is getting diluted because of overt concentration of entitlements based on reservation to those who have been identified officially as scheduled castes (SCs). While not denying the importance of reservation as a means to empower certain sections of Dalits who are above than other Dalit sub-castes, the meeting believed that there is a need to go beyon...

Harinesh Pandya By Our Representative The salt-pan farmers of the Little Rann of Kutch in Gujarat are in a state of agitation. Thousand of them, locally called “agariyas”, have been served a strongly-worded notice which wants them to provide “proof” of the ownership of the land on which they have been carrying on salt farming, or "quit". Issued by the range forest officer, Wild Ass Sanctuary of the Little Rann, the notice says that if they do not provide evidence of ownership within a week, cases would be registered against them under the wildlife protection Act, which stipulates fine of up to Rs 25,000 and jail from three to seven years.

Anandiben Patel at Sabarmati Riverfront By Rajiv Shah There is a veritable buzz in Gujarat: On September 17, when Chinese president Xi Jinping was in Gujarat, Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel, who received Xi at Ahmedabad International Airport, was “missing” in action at any of the important ceremonies held for his five hours of stay. While she was “around”, she wasn’t “visible”, or to be more precise, the state propaganda wing ensured that she was not projected at any place – the Hyatt Hotel where Xi was welcomed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Sabarmati Ashram where Xi “remembered” Mahatma Gandhi, and the Sabarmati riverfront, where Xi took a stroll with Modi ahead of Gujarati dinner.

Protest against "draconian" land acquisition bill, Rajasthan By Our Representative In a representation to Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje, several people’s organisations have said that the new Rajasthan land acquisition bill, 2014, tabled in the state assembly, was a clear effort of the state government to “undermine democratic and constitutional principles and traditions”, as it contradicts the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation, Resettlement Act, passed in Parliament last year. Saying that the bill ignores that it will adversely “impact more than 75 per cent of the population of the state”, it said, it is an effort to change Rajasthan “forever from a farming state to an urban state.”

Prashant Bhushan By Our Representative Seven well-known activists and academics, Aruna Roy, Ajit Ranade, Jagdeep Chhokar, Nikhil Dey, Rajni Bakshi, Shailesh Gandhi and Trilochan Sastry, in an open letter to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India have said that there was a need to ponder if the September 15 apex court order to reveal the name the identity of the whistleblower in the case against CBI director Ranjit Sinha was not against the Whistleblowers’ Act, passed in Parliament. “It is true that the rules for the Act have not been made so far. But the nation and the courts had backed the idea and spirit of the whistleblower’s Act”, the letter insists.

By Our Representative In a curious development, the day on which Chinese president Xi Jinping landed in Ahmedabad, September 17, birthday of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to kickstart his three-day visit, a top English language news and views website site that Xi's visit to India came when India was "transitioning into rule by the Hindu right wing BJP and new Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has no qualms about his fundamentalist credentials.” The site, which published its commentary in the Opinion column, emphatically recalls that Modi was “accused of turning a blind eye to the killings of hundreds of Muslims in religious riots when he was chief minister of the state of Gujarat in 2002.”

By Our Representative In an unusual development, the Gujarat government on September 17 morning quickly moved to cover up with long green curtains the entire slum area on the two sides of the road leading to the Sabarmati Ashram, Ahmedabad. Keen passersby noted that even the Dandi bridge, from where Mahatma Gandhi began his famous march towards Dandi for his historic 390-kilometres-long Salt Satyagraha in March-April 1930, was covered up with the curtains, as the slums are situated just next to the Dandi bridge. Only recently, the Dandi bridge was “repaired” and provided a “new look”.

Teesta Setalvad By Our Representative A well-known pro-Narendra Modi think-tank head, who has lately supported the Sangh Parivar’s controversial campaign against Love Jihad, has strongly defended the Gujarat People’s Union for Civil Liberties’ (PUCL’s) latest book for “ignoring” contributions by certain human rights activists in its latest book, “Human Rights in Gujarat and Civil Liberties Movement” (1974-2014). Head of Delhi-based India Policy Foundation, Rakesh Sinha has said those ignored in the book by no stretch of imagination can be called human rights activists.

By Venkatesh Nayak* Once again the issue of whistleblowing on corruption and inappropriate behaviour and protection for individuals who blow the whistle is in the limelight. This, even as the Central and State Governments and the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) drag their feet over operationalising the Whistleblowers Protection Act, 2011 enacted in May 2014. In a country where whistling and making catcalls at women are often dismissed with a wink and an uncivilised justification — “boys will be boys” – can and should whistleblowers come forward to serve the national motto ‘satyameva jayate’ (truth alone triumphs) by risking their lives and reputation openly? Will the administrative edifice erected over the foundation of the rule of law rise to protect them or is the foundation itself so shaky that whistleblowers will prefer the alternative of remaining silent in the face of apparent violation of the law, rules and code of ethical conduct? Should we only demand that Caesar’s wife be...