The Pune bench of the State Information Commissioner (SIC) has been witnessing a deluge of second appeals. A majority of these appeals, interestingly, have been filed by only a handful of people. Since the establishment of the Pune bench of the SIC in February 2007, 938 second appeals have been filed by 97 individuals. RTI activists claim this habit of filing multiple appeals is a major cause for the rise in pendency...

-IANS   The Delhi High Court on Wednesday issued notice to the central government on a public suit filed against the decision to exempt theCBI and the NIA from the purview of the RTI Act, the country's transparency law. A division bench of chief justice Dipak Mishra and justice Sanjeev Khanna issued notice to the central government, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the home and law...

NCPRI proposes bringing PM under Lokpal, suggests basket of anti-corruption measures The National Campaign for People's Right to Information (NCPRI) has proposed bringing the Prime Minister under the Lokpal with the safeguard that the executive head can only be investigated on the recommendation of the full benches of the Lokpal and the Supreme Court. At a consultative meeting held here on Friday, the NCPRI, which has two National Advisory Council members, Aruna...

If actions speak louder than words, then the government has just spoken loud and clear. There could be no stronger indication of the government’s lack of serious intent in building an effective anti-corruption regime than the decision to remove the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) from the purview of the Right to Information (RTI) law. Without any discussion in the public domain, the government has decided to use Section 24 of...

With two rival versions of the Lokpal Bill already competing for public attention, the stage now seems to have been set for the emergence of a third alternative, courtesy the National Campaign for the People's Right to Information (NCPRI). On July 6, the NCPRI, whose working committee includes National Advisory Council (NAC) member Aruna Roy, will present an “alternative approach” to the rival Lokpal Bills, drafted separately after talks broke down...