-IANS   The Delhi High Court on Wednesday issued notice to the central government on a public suit filed against the decision to exempt theCBI and the NIA from the purview of the RTI Act, the country's transparency law. A division bench of chief justice Dipak Mishra and justice Sanjeev Khanna issued notice to the central government, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the home and law...

Why is the ruling party unable to pass 3 very important bills? The National Advisory Council draws its exalted status from the fact that UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi heads it. But its inability to get its way on three new Bills indicates that its influence is waning. A couple of weeks ago, the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) cleared the drafts of two significant Bills — the Food Security Bill and...

-PTI   In order to deal better with growing intra-departmental RTI queries, Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) has decided to train its over 100 officials on different matters related to Right to Information Act. DoPT, which acts as a nodal agency to oversee implementation of the transparency law, has decided to train a total of 104 Central Public Information Officers and Appellate Authorities. The decision was taken after some of...

The proposed Privacy Bill seems skewed towards the state rather than the citizen Sometimes the best of intentions can camouflage the worst of motives. On the face of it, the government’s bid to bring in a privacy bill is a welcome move, a long-overdue measure. But after an initial approach paper prepared by lawyers and bureaucrats in November last year, the government went into a secretive huddle. Now a leaked...

-The Times of India   The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) was exempted from the purview of the Right to Information (RTI) Act on the sole recommendation of attorney general Goolam Vahanvati. The RTI exemption for the CBI announced by the central government on June 9 was in contradiction with suggestions made by the law ministry and also department of personnel and training (DoPT), the nodal agency for RTI implementation. This was unearthed...