The first step towards opening "secret" files maintained by civil servants and public authorities was taken by Parliament through Freedom of Information Act, 2002. It was replaced by Right to Information Act in 2005. The objective was to give meaning to the word "civil servant". For, the babus had been groomed by the system to hide almost everything from those for whose service they were employed. Attitude is an important aspect...

In an unprecedented move, the Goa Information Commission has summoned governor Dr S S Sidhu for claiming that the Right to Information Act didn't apply to his office. The commission took umbrage to the governor's attempt to escape accountability under RTI by claiming the his office wasn't a ''public authority'' as defined in the transparency law. The governor's stand flies in the face of the Act's scheme under which all government offices,...

This order will bind all private unaided schools in Rajasthan, but it underlined the Supreme Court's anxiety towards implementation of Right To Education Act, 2009, which mandated schools to keep 25% of seats for socially and economically disadvantaged sections. Importantly, a Bench comprising Justices R V Raveendran and A K Patnaik also stayed the stipulation of weightage to parent's educational qualification for admissions into pre-primary and nursery classes. Though this is...

Communist Party of India (Marxist) Polit Bureau member Brinda Karat on Tuesday called for a time-bound commission to look into the anomalies in scheduling tribal communities, and pointed out that there was a huge undercounting of their number. “It is not just the question of numbers. Their right to a share of national resources is not recognised because of undercounting,” she said at a protest organised by the National Platform for...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh offered Monday to appear before a committee investigating a telecommunications scandal that has rocked India’s political establishment. He rejected claims by opposition parties that he had been trying to avoid any questioning. “I wish to state categorically that I have nothing to hide from the public at large,” Mr. Singh said on the final day of a plenary session of the Indian National Congress Party. “As proof...