-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday admitted that it had erred by directing the government to appoint only retired apex court judges and high court chief justices as heads of information commissions at the central and state levels. Restoring the position provided under the Right To Information Act for appointment of chiefs of information commissions, a bench of Justices A K Patnaik and A K Sikri erased...
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Not all black and white-Ruchi Gupta
-The Hindu Political parties have acted as judge, jury, supplicant and advocate in their move to amend the RTI Act and remove themselves from its purview. Their rhetoric on transparency sounds more hollow now than ever. The RTI Act provides a regime of consummate transparency of "public authorities". Instead of specifying information to be disclosed, the Act mandates 100 per cent transparency subject only to a tightly defined list of exclusions under...
More »Government has not come back to us, says CIC -Bindu Shajan Perappadan and Mohammad Ali
-The Hindu In June, the CIC ruled that political parties should come within the ambit of the Right to Information Act In a landmark judgment, in June this year, the Central Information Commission (CIC) ruled that political parties should come within the ambit of the Right to Information Act. The CIC order noted: "We have no hesitation in concluding that INC/AICC, BJP, CPI(M), CPI, NCP and BSP have been substantially financed by the...
More »For more aware citizens, more accountable parties -Shailesh Gandhi
-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...
More »SP in favour of parties coming under RTI -Pervez Iqbal Siddiqui
-The Times of India LUCKNOW: Breaking ranks with the other parties, the Samajwadi Party on Thursday said it favoured a mechanism of checks and balances for transparency in the functioning of the political parties. The SP was referring to the June 3, 2013, ruling of the chief information commissioner (CIC) that says political parties come under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. Almost all national parties have opposed the CIC ruling. National...
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