-The Indian Express Holding back the RTI amendment is not the best way to address public concerns about party finance. There has been great civil society uproar over the Right to Information (Amendment) Bill, 2013, which aims to extricate political parties from mandatory public disclosures, and nullify the Central Information Commission's recent order. While passing the amendment would have been all too easy, given the broad political consensus, a last-minute turnaround in...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: As the first woman chief information commissioner, Deepak Sandhu, who has been media advisor to the PM and spokesperson for the government, on Thursday said the RTI Act had altered the relationship between citizens and government from a "mai-baap" one to a culture of accountability and transparency. Sandhu, who was administered the oath of office by President Pranab Mukherjee, said her priority would be to address...

-The Hindu Members of Parliament opposed to the proposed amendment of the RTI Act have vowed to continue building pressure until the political class becomes accountable to the common citizen. Trinamool Congress MP Dinesh Trivedi, who actively opposed the RTI (Amendment) Bill, 2013, told The Hindu that the Bill should never have come up in Parliament. "We need to be actively involved with this movement now. We cannot afford to take a...

One landmark law, the Right to Information Act, has helped over a thousand adivasis in north Maharashtra in getting closer to their rights under another landmark law – the Forest Rights Act. The latter was legislated in 2006 giving forest dwelling and other adivasi communities individual and community rights to lands they had traditionally cultivated and occupied. But communities in rural India have faced an uphill battle in getting the...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday admitted that it had erred by directing the government to appoint only retired apex court judges and high court chief justices as heads of information commissions at the central and state levels. Restoring the position provided under the Right To Information Act for appointment of chiefs of information commissions, a bench of Justices A K Patnaik and A K Sikri erased...