-The Times of India   Central information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi on Sunday faulted the process of selection of information commissioners. "My selection is a flawed process. The process of selection of information commissioner is faulty," Gandhi told reporters here. Stating that the biggest threat to right to information was from the central and state commissions, Gandhi said prolonged pendency of cases with the commissions and faulty selection process of commissioners would defeat the...

-PTI Information about the overstay of Pakistani nationals working in Bollywood and television industry cannot be provided as Special Branch of Mumbai Police is exempted under the RTI act, says a reply from the police. NGO 'National Counsel for Civil Liberties' had sought from Maharashtra Home Department details as to how many Pakistani film artists such as actors, directors, producers, singer, musicians and so on are working illegally in Mumbai. The Home department...

At a time of national uproar over corruption and the Lokpal Bill, the government is proposing to enact a law making it compulsory for every ministry and department to act within 30 days on complaints from the public. The law will set up a mechanism similar to the Right to Information (RTI) Act, and dovetails with Anna Hazare’s key demand of a “citizens’ charter” to deal with public grievances. Under the proposed...

Over the last few days, as a desperate government tried to tide over the Lokpal Bill crisis, it received over half-a-dozen variants of the draft legislation. On Saturday, both Houses of Parliament took up the subject and though the debate was mostly confined to the Jan Lokpal Bill, it made the political point that while an effective law should be devised to tackle corruption, Parliament’s supremacy must be maintained. The...

Even as the state tries to provide a corruption-free government with the Lokseva Guarantee Bill, a similar venture by it earlier has fallen by the wayside. With no chief information commissioner (CIC) in the state for the past five months the much-trumpeted Right To Information (RTI) Act, which aims to bring in transparency, has almost become defunct. Incidentally, Rajasthan had taken the first steps in bringing this law in the...