-The Asian Age The Central Board of Direct Taxes had been taking action whenever it found there were unexplained known sources of income. New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the Centre to furnish details of the action taken against MLAs and members of Parliament whose assets had grown manifold during the intervening period between one election to another. A bench of Justices J. Chelameswar and S.A. Abdul Nazeer passed this order...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Advocates of transparency have a new worry amid the euphoria over the privacy verdict - the possibility of information commissioners citing the new fundamental right to deny answers under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. As it is, RTI activists have had to contend with commissioners using Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act to refuse information on the premise that it infringes upon a person's privacy. The section...

-The Hindu Climate change and anthropogenic factors are having a detrimental effect on the Cauvery delta region, a study spanning almost four decades reveals The Cauvery delta region, widely regarded as the granary of Tamil Nadu, has shrunk, with cultivable lands increasingly deteriorating into waste lands — this is the finding of a recently concluded study undertaken by retired professor of the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) S. Janakarajan. Funded by the...

-Hindustan Times The RTI Act of 2005 made the government more accountable. But a new set of proposed rules may weaken the law and make it difficult and risky for people to access information In 2015, activist Lokesh Batra filed a Right To Information (RTI) application with the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) seeking details about the appointment of the next Chief Information Commissioner (CIC). But the DoPT refused to...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Can mice or fire destroying files be an adequate excuse not to give information under the RTI Act? That's a question that the central information commission has asked officials in response to a complaint filed by an RTI applicant who claimed that he had been denied information by the department concerned on the basis that the files were "missing". The RTI applicant, Virendra Singh Jafna, had...