An RTI applicant last week stumped State Information Commissioner (SIC) Vijay Kuvalekar when he demanded that the district collectorate provide him with copies of various Acts under the Indian Penal Code. The Public Information Officer and the Appellate Authority rejected his application. An exasperated SIC told the applicant that he could get the copies from the market. “Why do you have to move an RTI application for this?” Kuvalekar said. The...

Members of the Socialist Unity Centre of India (SUCI) district organising committee staged a dharna at Gandhi Chowk here on Thursday to protest against the acquisition of fertile land by the State Government in the name of industrialisation and alleged land scams involving Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa and his Cabinet colleagues. Addressing the agitators, SUCI district secretary Bhagwaan Reddy alleged that the Yeddyurappa-led Bharatiya Janata Party Government came to power by...

Taking on the Department of Information Technology and Administrative Reforms, under which the state information commission falls, Punjab CIC RI Singh asserted that the rules FRAmed by the Punjab government were in conflict with the RTI Act. “The powers to make the rules have been vested with the government to carry out the provisions of this Act and not to thwart them,” he said. Singh said although a formal direction to...

It came as a rude shock for parents of economically weaker sections (EWS) whose wards were denied admission under the Right to Education Act, which guarantees 25% reservation in schools at entry level. Most schools don't seem inclined to implement the provisions of the RTE Act as the state government has failed to FRAme rules in this regard. A few schools are not even accepting the forms under this category,...

After visits to 17 states, a committee set up in April last year to check out the implementation of India’s Forest Rights Act, meant to fix “historical injustice,” wasn’t very happy. The law, which came into full effect two years ago, was intended to assert the rights of forest dwellers more firmly. “The overall finding of the committee is that, with notable exceptions, the implementation of the FRA has been poor,...