India declines offer to join international efforts against corruption

Despite being invited, India has decided against joining an international effort, led by the US and Brazil, for an open government partnership to root out corruption, to make governance more accountable to citizens and more transparent.

"India actually met the criteria, and was itself very much invited to be part of the partnership, but as of this point has chosen not to," a senior US Administration official said.

However, the Indian civil society is represented in the steering committee, the official said.

"I would say that Indian civil society is represented on the steering committee and have been hugely helpful," the official said speaking on condition of anonymity.

In fact, officials said there is disappointment that a country like India which met all the criteria of being part of this initiative launched in New York later today decided not to join the global open government initiative.

The Open Government Initiative tries bring countries together to be able to address areas that are the core principles of this effort for countries and governments to become, on the one hand, more transparent in the way in which they carry out their activity, and that more transparent basically means making more information available to the public about the operations of a government, the official said.

Accountability is one of the core concepts of this.

Besides the US and Brazil, other  countries part of this eight-member group are Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, Norway, the Philippines, and Britain; which form the steering committee.