Days after chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy wished to see every police station in the state work like a corporate office and the complainant received warmly, a Right to Information (rti) activist on Friday was nearly subjected to the third degree treatment by inspector K Srinivas Rao after he walked into Kukatpally police station, and only timely intervention by higher-ups saved him from being arrested and slapped with false cases....

Seventy-seven schools run by the Pune Municipal Corporation do not have sanitation facilities in tune with the norms set by the Union ministry of rural development's department of drinking water supply, a Right to Information Act (rti) application by P M Shah Foundation has found. Lack of proper sanitation facilities was one of the reasons girls dropped out of school. The information was sought from the civic education board. The...

-The Hoot The brutally fatal silencing of three journalists along with the sharp rise in censorship of content in online media and the increasing cases of defamation marked the deterioration of the climate for free speech across India in 2011. Attacks on journalists continued to be high, with 24 recorded instances even as writers, journalists and lawyers bore the brunt of the intolerance of vigilante groups to dissenting opinion. The Free Speech...

The chief state information commission (CSIC) is likely to conduct more ‘Special Appeal Disposal Programme’ after disposing of more than 450 of the 607 Right To Information (rti) appeals in just four days. Chief state information commissioner Vijay Kuvalekar had organised the programme, which was conducted at the Podar Medical College (Ayurved), Worli, over a four-day period. The event aimed at disposing of piled up rti applications at CSIC since 2008. Nearly...

In a move that would usher in greater transparency, the Central Information Commission (CIC) ordered that legal opinion sought internally by the government can be made public.   The decision is also significant because it could compound the political problems of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), which is impacted by a series of allegations of corruption, some of which have been revealed through filing of queries under Right to Information (rti). The...