My Columns: Without Fear and Favour

Delhi Polls: Corruption Issue on Centre Stage By  Deepak Parvatiyar January 13, 2015 (An edited version was published in elections.in) Delhi shares a distinct bond with Ulaanbaatar. While both rank high on corruption, politicians of both the Indian and Mongolian capital cities swear to combat corruption! While both remain among the most corrupt places in the world as per the latest indices, in recent times both cities have improved their positions, either through legislations or through mass movements, on corruption perception Index of the rating agencies. Yet Ulaanbaatar is different from Delhi in more than one ways. It is the city where more than fifty per cent of the entire population of Mongolia resides. Delhi in comparison, despite being world’s second most populous city with about 25 million citizens, is at the most the nerve centre of Indian politics and there are other big cities that play almost similar big roles in the nation’s development. When i...

Delhi Polls: The Season of Political Chargesheets By  Deepak Parvatiyar January 12, 2015 On August 21, 2014, the Delhi Congress submitted a 25-point chargesheet against Bharatiya Janata Party and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor, for the sufferings of the people of Delhi. Some of the charges that the Congress made against its political rivals were: a) Both the BJP and the AAP were creating confusion over regularisation of unauthorised colonies to derive political mileage b) Welfare schemes like Ladli, Annasri and Pension that were introduced by the Congress government, were stopped c) The residents were not being given food security cards d) New flyovers and elevated roads projects as well as mono rail projects were now thrown in the dust bin e) The BJP as well as the AAP could not deliver on their respective promises of reducing the power tariff by 30 per cent and 50 per cent f)       From A...

Land Acquisition Act: Pros and Cons of Amendments By  Deepak Parvatiyar January 9, 2015 On December 29, the Narendra Modi government took the ordinance route to enforce changes in the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013. This was the third time in about a week that the government had promulgated ordinances to push its development agenda. The earlier two such ordinances being for increasing the cap from present 26 per cent to 49 per cent on foreign investment in the insurance sector; and for facilitating auctioning of coal mining licenses. Promulgating Ordinances is not a preferred practice in a Parliamentary Democracy The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre has moved on to issue seven ordinances within a fortnight to circumvent the Parliamentary logjam during the winter session. It may be mentioned that such executive orders are generally meant to become l...