The Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) invested more than Rs 3,600 crore last year in the tobacco industry, anti-tobacco activists and cancer specialists said today, describing the investments as ironical and unethical. Figures obtained through the right to information route by a consortium of activists and doctors show that in 2010-11, LIC had invested in shares of ITC and VST Industries and in debentures of Dharampal Satyapal Ltd, which makes chewable tobacco...

“They are trying to intimidate me, my family and my well-wishers” A Vadodara-based social activist and environmentalist, Rohit Prajapati, has complained of “harassment and intimidation” by the police for making RTI queries regarding the State government's environment policies. He claimed that the police and the Special Operations Group were “questioning” him, asking for photographs and making other inquiries in the past couple of years. While the police claimed these to be “routine...

-The Times of India   Should government-run companies invest in tobacco firms? This is the question that Voices of Tobacco Victims (VoTV), an NGO working for cancer patients, has raised after its recent query under the RTI Act revealed that the Life Insurance Corporation of India has invested up to Rs 3,500 crore in various tobacco companies. "It's the greatest irony that the government spends Rs 10,000 crore on treatment of tobacco-related illnesses...

-The Times of India   With the Bhilwara pattern social audit of schemes under the MGNREGA shelved in the state, the alternative method is also coming under political pressure. A recent application under the Right to Information (RTI) Act has revealed letters from a minister and an MLA urging the social audit directorate not to conduct audit of MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) schemes in villages falling in their constituencies....

-The Telegraph   Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh today opposed sharing of certain “privileged” and “secret” matters under the right to information (RTI) law, echoing cabinet colleagues Salman Khurshid and M. Veerappa Moily. “Ministers write to the Prime Minister on a variety of issues. There has to be a concept of secrecy in government,” Ramesh said. According to Ramesh, communications leading to a cabinet decision or a policy decision of the government should be...