Mandated to monitor the implementation of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights is planning social monitoring of the historic law that guarantees elementary education to children in the age group of 6-14. This is the first time that the law separates the implementing agency from the monitoring one. The basic premise of social monitoring is public participation in...

Good things should not be curbed. Certainly not a legislation to which so much is owed by so many. The Right to Information Act is a fundamental democratic achievement for India, one that took a long time in coming for a proclaimed democratic state. And when it did, the system became more transparent, if not cleaner. Ordinary citizens, urban and rural, with little or no ability to negotiate their way...

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,...

The National Advisory Council is set to oppose the Centre’s proposal to dilute the Right to Information Act through a new set of rules.A meeting of the panel’s working group on transparency, accountability and governance — headed by RTI activist Aruna Roy — objected to the move to compress applications for information to only one matter at a time and set a word limit of 250.The sub-committee that recently consulted...

Since the last few years, Prashan Bhushan, senior lawyer, has fired up the Indian political scene through his missionary legal practice.In the legal fraternity he is a loner because he is, always, on the wrong side of the power set up in New Delhi. In fact, when one meets the slow and soft-speaker, he hardly looks like a lawyer who is capable of shaking-up the government and its cronies.But, his...