-FirstPost.com Former Central Information Commissioner (CIC) Shailesh Gandhi on Monday lashed out at the Centre for allegedly rendering the Right to Information (RTI) Act "dysfunctional" by taking retrogressive steps. In an open letter written to a section of the media, Gandhi said, "the present Prime Minister has taken preemptive action by not appointing a Chief Information Commissioner at all to render it dysfunctional." Gandhi, a noted RTI activist from Mumbai, was appointed to...

-DNA India Constant decrease in investment on research and development blamed for carelessly conceived schemes A fishing project in the deserts of Rajasthan, cold storage facilities for bananas in Maharashtra's no-banana Pune district, milk coolers in Gujarat's Sagbara region where there is no milk production and no electricity either… Those are just some of the examples of carelessly conceived government schemes to bolster farm growth at a time share of the...

-The Hindu Business Line Govt wants to keep issues of national importance outside purview of the law New Delhi: Is the Centre diluting the whistleblower protection law by excluding certain issues of national importance from its purview? It appears so, going by the latest Amendment Bill, which was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Monday. A likely effect of the new Bill is that whistleblowers seeking to raise issues of national importance, including those...

-Business Standard Amendments will bar whistleblowers from disclosing info which govt and its agencies are exempted from providing under RTI Act The NDA government has proposed to substantially reduce the kind of information the whistle-blowers will be able to disclose under the Whistleblowers Protection Act, 2011. The government has tabled an amendment bill in the Lok Sabha that reduces the mandate of the law considerably. If the amendment is passed, the whistle-blower would no...

-PTI Despite India's declining child sex ratio, as many as 30 states and union territories have not convicted even a single person for pre-conception and pre-natal diagnostic between 2011 and 2013, raising concerns about the poor implementation of the PCPNDT Act. Despite India's declining child sex ratio, as many as 30 states and union territories have not convicted even a single person for pre-conception and pre-natal diagnostic between 2011 and 2013,...