Articles by Sunil Tinani

A rather regrettable medical situation arose in Mallya Hospital, one of Bangalore's premier hospitals, two years ago. A patient's life was placed at great peril and she is lucky to be alive today. At the culmination of a case fought and appealed at a consumer forum, the hospital paid the patient Rs.265,588 a few days back. Here's what happened: Early June 2006M G Radha, aged about 58, a housewife and resident of Vidyaranyapura began experiencing bouts of back pain. The pains persisted for about 15 days, and Radha and her family decided to get the condition investigated at Mallya Hospital.…

Access to information using the RTI Act may have changed for the worse. The Government of Karnataka under Governor Rameshwar Thakur's administration has added a new rule, #14, which places a restriction on the subjects and the number of words to be contained in an application asking for information under the RTI Act. The rule was in the form of amendment (GO) to RTI rules 2005 and signed by the Under Secretary, Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms on behalf of President of India and published in the Gazette of GOK. It is now in force. The rule allows only…

Guru Ravindranath, one of the prominent RTI users in the city filed an RTI application on 31 January 2007. For not receiving the information, he filed an appeal on 14/3/07. The first hearing was set to 25/5/07. It was then postponed to 28/8/07. Then again it was postponed to 22/11/07. And again it was postponed to 12/2/08. And then again to 14/4/08! The state's Chief Information Commissioner at this time is K K Mishra. The RTI (Right To Information) Act is a special-purpose vehicle that is supposed to feed the citizens with information on demand. But Karnataka's bureaucrats are exploiting…

Sure enough, the Lokayukta is doing a good job in rounding up corrupt and inefficient officials and we congratulate them for that. However, we at Citizen Matters always wondered what made the Lokayukta tick, what happened to the people who were booked, and whether the Karnataka Lokayukta Act was powerful enough to make the Lokayukta an extremely effective anti-corruption organisation. Well, we decided to interview with Justice Santosh Hegde, the present Lokayukta and then draw our own conclusions from what emerged.67-year-old Justice Hedge took office in August 2006 for a five-year term. He was born in Karkala taluk, now in…

We pay taxes and duties on just about everything - on our income, on purchase of capital assets such as property and cars, on services, and on our expenses. Part of the tax collection goes to the central government, and part to the state and local governments. A substantial portion of these funds is earmarked for spending on area development. This much we know. In Bangalore, the reality is that city corporators work hand-in-glove with corporation officials (BBMP) and contractors to ensure that a good portion of the funds earmarked for development are milked back into their own pockets. Guru…