-The Hindu This is an extreme underestimation, going by the other assessments made by Central and State governments, including Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s estimate of 8 crore stranded migrants. The Chief Labour Commissioner’s (CLC) office has counted over 26 lakh migrant workers stranded across the country, of which 10% are in relief camps or shelter homes, while 43% are in situ at workplaces and 46% are in other clusters. This is an extreme...

-The Telegraph The activists were speaking against the backdrop of the govt weakening the RTI architecture through amendments The Supreme Court judgment bringing the Chief Justice of India’s office under the Right to Information Act was welcomed by RTI activists but some of them disagreed with the observation of one of the judges that the “right to information should not be allowed to be used as a tool of surveillance to scuttle...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Forced to defer introduction of the Right to Information (Amendment) Bill, 2018, in the face of stiff opposition in Parliament and outside, the Narendra Modi government appears to have brought it into effect without parliamentary approval through an advertisement. On July 26, the department of personnel, public grievances & pensions issued an advertisement for appointment of information commissioners in the Central Information Commission (CIC) that said the "salary,...

-MoneyLife.in Recently and at last, Maharashtra has appointed a Chief Information Commissioner under the Right to Informaation (RTI) Act, and it is no surprise that he happens to be a former bureaucrat.  Sumit Mallik, who just retired as Chief Secretary, takes over the chair, which was lying vacant since the last several months. The trend of appointing civil servants for the posts of CICs and Informaction Commissioners (ICs) has continued ever since...

-Hindustan Times A 6% fall between 2015-16 and 2016-17 was reported in RTI applications filed with the 1,950 public authorities of the Central government, which receives maximum information applications followed by Maharashtra and Karnataka. The right to information law meant to empower Indians and bring transparency in governance appeared to be losing steam with the number of queries going down mainly because of stone-walling of information by officials and slow disposal of...