SURAT: His questions in RTI applications may irritate any government officer. Yet the officials nonetheless read the applications filed by RTI Activist Kanu Shah, 75, with lot of interest and enthusiasm. "Normally, the applications are filed in a plain paper and have a simple format. However, Shah adds flavour to them. He uses colours, logos and scanned images to make them look beautiful," said Nagin Halpati, public information officer, District Education...

Fourteen national and international non-government organisations and academic centres have called for reforms in what they say are excessively-broad exemptions granted to the government on national security issues by the Right to Information (RTI) Act. To guide decision-making on information requests relating to national security, the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), along with other groups, is in the process of formulating “guidelines” to bring about consensus on the extent of restrictions...

On 23rd May, Moneylife wrote on how a Kerala citizen was denied access to Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel Report (WGEEP). The Central Information Commission and the Delhi High Court ordered the ministry to make it public. It has now been uploaded on its site Just when one wondered whether the ministry of environment & forests (MoEF) would turn to the Supreme Court after the Delhi High Court on 17th May,...

-Deccan Herald The files relating to framing of rules for empanelment of officers to the post of additional secretary and secretary at the Centre cannot be disclosed as these are Cabinet papers exempt from disclosure under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the government has maintained. This stand of the government was reiterated in a letter to the Central Information Commission (CIC) by the Cabinet secretariat’s under secretary. The government decided to approach...

In an order that could have far-reaching implications, the Odisha State Information Commission has directed the state government to furnish information on top government officials facing corruption charges. The state transparency watchdog’s order last month came on a Hindustan Times petition. The government, which was told to make the information public as a part of self-disclosure under the Right to Information Act within a month (by the last week of May),...