-The Hindu "Collusion with Ajit Pawar to get Vidarbha land for his NGO" Training its guns on the Bharatiya Janata Party, India Against Corruption (IAC) on Wednesday alleged that the party president Nitin Gadkari took undue favours from the Maharashtra government in allotment of land acquired from Vidarbha farmers for a “public purpose.” For their generations-old land the farmers were compensated with a paltry sum of Rs. 5,000 per acre in 1981-82. Addressing...

-The Hindu A recent Supreme Court judgment and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s openly expressed views in favour of privacy have raised concerns that attempts are being made to dilute the spirit of the RTI Act and limit its use. Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey, the RTI’s movement’s leading lights, share their worries with Vidya Subrahmaniam. * Seven years after its enactment, has the RTI Act even partially fulfilled its objectives? Has it...

-The Hindustan Times In a ruling that would be music to the ears of babus, the Supreme Court (SC) has held that a government officer’s personal details such as income-tax (I-T) returns cannot be divulged in response to a query under the Right to Information Act (RTI) unless a larger public interest was involved. Disclosure of such information would amount to unwarranted invasion of an officer’s privacy, it said. “The performance of...

-Live Mint The first in a two-part series examining the opaque world of clinical trials in India  A hospital in Indore has been able to get away with unethical medical trials in which 32 people have died over five years, according to the state government. This despite several investigations, a state government ban and Supreme Court strictures—a classic example of the lawless nature of the clinical trial business in India.   Lata Mehra, who...

-Outlook The Supreme Court has ruled that the details of a person's income tax returns and performance of an employee are "personal information" which cannot be divulged under the provisions of the Right to Information Act unless a larger public interest is involved. The apex court added that under the transparency law, information pertaining to the performance of an employee or officer cannot be made public as it is a matter between...