-PTI New Delhi: The Central Information Commission has directed the Bureau of Immigration, an agency exempted from RTI Act disclosures, to give a person details of his travel as he needed it for defence in penal proceedings that landed him in jail. The CIC underlined that any impediment to a person's self-defence would be a breach of human rights. The case pertains to RTI applicant M. Dinesh, who had sought information related to...

-The Hindu Telangana’s experience is instructive The institutionalisation of “social audits” to ensure implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) has been challenging. Since being included in the 2005 Act at the behest of social movements, social audits have been ineffective in most parts of the country due to government indifference. So far, 26 States have created social audit units (SAUs), but the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG’s) detailed guidelines...

-The Indian Express Bill Gates’s claim that it raises no privacy concerns is misleading. Crucial issues that have to do with confidentiality of data and state surveillance are at stake. According to Bill Gates, privacy is not a concern with Aadhaar (‘Aadhaar doesn’t pose any privacy issue, says Bill Gates’, IE, May 3). This widely-quoted statement would have been more convincing if Gates had shown a clear understanding of the Aadhaar project....

-The Times of India BENGALURU: Union IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Sunday that he was personally not in favour of linking Aadhaar cards with electoral photo-identity cards (EPIC) of voters as the two serve different purposes. "I am not saying this as an IT minister... My personal opinion is Aadhaar should not be linked with the voter ID card," Prasad said at an event here. He said the government was not...

-TheWire.in Union minister for information and broadcasting has announced the possibility of such a framework arguing that the present regulations on online content are “not clear” with regard to news and broadcast content material. New Delhi: In at attempt to regulate online content – particularly news and opinion –  the Modi government is working on a “code of conduct” and perhaps draft legislation too that it will be “incumbent upon [media] agencies”...