The Right to Information Act (rti) can be used in different ways not only to expose corruption in government offices and public sector enterprises but also to force private NGOs and societies under Section 2(f) of the act to cough up information. Using the tool, noose can be tightened around those private agencies that try to fool people in the name of being associated with government-sponsored schemes. The option available in the...

Karnataka chief minister has 287 people, including principal secretary, advisors and dalayats (who do menial jobs), to assist him and together they take home Rs 70 lakh as salary every month. This excludes security personnel who guard chief minister D V Sadananda Gowda round the clock. An rti query revealed there are 237 personnel for the CM at Vidhana Soudha, 21 people assist him at his home office 'Krishna' and 29...

The government's zero transparency enabled Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority (NSRA) Bill has got thumbs down from a Parliamentary standing committee. The Atomic Energy Department had introduced NSRA Bill for setting up independent nuclear safety watchdog in Parliament last year with specific clauses limiting the applicability of the Right To Information (rti) Act, the government's first such move. The bill propose to incorporate additional proviso in section 8 --- listing exempted clauses ---...

They operate from a cramped floor in a commercial building near Bhikaji Cama Place in Delhi, and work on a heavy roster of hearings day in and day out. However, the five posts of information commissioners in the Central Information Commission have drawn applications from all categories of people — from scientists, lawyers and journalists to, most of all, retired or soon-to-be retired bureaucrats.   Despite the heavy workload and its low-profile...

-PTI   The Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), an autonomous public private partnership project headed by the Prime Minister's cardiologist K Srinath Reddy, comes under the ambit of the rti Act as it is substantial financed by the government, the CIC has held.  The PHFI came into existence in the year 2006 with an initial fund corpus of Rs 200 crore, in which government had contributed Rs 65 crore, the Central Information...