Chief information commissioner (CIC) Wajahat Habibullah on Sunday said rural people in Rajasthan are more aware about the Right to Information (RTI) Act. RTI is the only tool which compels politicians as well as bureaucrats to maintain transparency in their functioning. Habibullah was speaking at a seminar on How RTI is Useful To Eradicate Corruption from Politics organised by Citizen Council and PUCL. "The whole world is looking towards our...
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RTI reveals three-year delay in printing of ration cards
Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi has pulled up the Delhi Government's Food and Supplies Department for a “distressing state of affairs where ration cards are not being printed for three years by a vendor''. Mr. Gandhi made the observation while disposing of an appeal by a resident of a slum cluster in Delhi who had filed a Right to Information application with the Department on not getting a ration card even three...
More »India's 'revolutionary' RTI Act fails to reach the poor
A law empowering Indians to seek information from government to promote accountability and transparency has brought change to urban India, but has largely left out the country's rural poor, social activists say. The Right to Information (RTI) Act - similar to the Freedom of Information Act in the United States - was enacted almost five years ago and is aimed at providing a practical way for all citizens to access...
More »Requests of information acceded by CIC by Prakash Kamat
A full bench of the Central Information Commission headed by Chief Central Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah has recently held that while all proceedings before the Parliamentary Committees (PC) are no doubt held secret, it cannot be stretched to mean that every single item of information, held anywhere, that may, now or in future, become part of the proceedings before the PC, or may be required to be produced before the...
More »Activists questions rules to select information commissioners by Jacob P Koshy
A clutch of activists questioned the manner in which government went about choosing information commissioners,or the authorities tasked with facilitating public inquiry under the Right To Information (RTI) Act. In a press conference, prominent RTI activists, including Magsaysay awardee Arvind Kejriwal, alleged that Department of Personnel and Training hadn’t prescribed rules to select information commissioners. This, they added, encouraged an arbitary selection of individuals to these posts. India’s RTI Act of...
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