-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Union environment ministry is expected to approve the K Kasturirangan panel report on Western Ghats and declare around 60,000 square kilometers of the southern hills - spanning across six states - as no-go area for mining, thermal power plants and heavily polluting industries. Sources in the ministry said, the process has begun to finalize the decision after receiving comments from public and state governments on...

-PTI NEW DELHI: The government is not considering to amend the RTI Act to give immunity to political parties from providing information after the recent Central Information Commission's order brought them under the transparency law. Officials in the department of personnel and training (DoPT), which acts as nodal department for the implementation of RTI Act, said they have gone through the CIC's order and there was nothing that warranted their intervention. "If a...

-The Indian Express In the aftermath of the Central Information Commission's order holding political parties as public authorities for the disclosure of details of political funding, the turf war between members of civil society and the parties has intensified. It is commonly believed that a major source of corruption in the functioning of government can be traced back to the method of funding of parties and elections. The efforts made by...

-The Indian Express Should political parties be brought under the RTI? Two former central information commissioners debate On reading The Indian Express editorial ('Party police', June 5) and Pratap Bhanu Mehta's article ('Party fixing', IE, June 6) about the CIC order declaring that six political parties are public authorities, I felt they had missed a crucial point. The decision of the commission has been based on the RTI Act. The act states...

-The Hindu     While the legitimacy of political parties depends on their acceptance of financial transparency under the RTI Act, their internal decision-making processes should be left alone The Central Information Commission (CIC) decision declaring political parties as public authorities under the Right to Information Act has again pit the political class against the people. Political parties have increasingly lost legitimacy due to opaque financing, cultivation of individuals with a criminal background, subversion of...