-Economic and Political Weekly The RTI is virtually being strangled to death by deliberate delays in appointments. If you find a law uncomfortable, even one that you supported and passed, what should you do? Repealing it would not be politically smart; amending or diluting it will give ammunition to your critics. So the best strategy is to strangulate it, softly and steadily, until it is rendered lifeless and ineffectual. Something like this...

-FirstPost.com Former Central Information Commissioner (CIC) Shailesh Gandhi on Monday lashed out at the Centre for allegedly rendering the Right to Information (RTI) Act "dysfunctional" by taking retrogressive steps. In an open letter written to a section of the media, Gandhi said, "the present Prime Minister has taken preemptive action by not appointing a Chief Information Commissioner at all to render it dysfunctional." Gandhi, a noted RTI activist from Mumbai, was appointed to...

-The Indian Express Files already piled up on the Chief Information Commissioner’s desk could take up to 2020 to clear. Delay in appointing the CIC hurts the objectives of both the RTI Act and the PM’s pledge of good governance. The RTI Act, 2005 provided for a Central Information Commission and State Information Commissions to deal with appeals and complaints against public authorities. Section 12 of the RTI Act states, “The Central...

-The Hindu The government has refused RTI requests for information on the decision-making process on amendments to Land Acquisition Bill. On January 17, Chitrangada Choudhury, a Fellow with the Open Society Institute, filed an RTI request with the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD), seeking documents, file notings and correspondence between the MoRD and other authorities relating to any proposed amendments to the Land Acquisition Act, 2013, and the NDA’s December 2014 ordinance. Two...

-The Hindu 11 out of 25 have never reported any RTI information to the CIC India's top security and intelligence agencies consistently refuse to give out any information about the Right to Information requests they receive, and those that do, reject the bulk of queries they receive, new data shows. Twenty-five of India's top security agencies are exempt from most of the requirements of the RTI Act, but are required to provide access...