Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi sold off his business in 2003 to do something relevant. The Indian Institute of Technology-Mumbai alumnus soon became a prolific user of the Right To Information Act and filed more than 800 rti applications. He was appointed the Information Commissioner at the Central Information Commission, New Delhi, in 2008. In this freewheeling interview with rediff.com's Priyanka, Gandhi says that appellants must understand that law describes 'information' as something...

There can be two ways of looking at the latest mess on the 2G spectrum front in the form of the Prime Minister's Office supplying a sensitive note to a request under the Right to Information (rti) Act. The widely-held view locates the root of this mess in rivalry between finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and home minister P Chidambaram, stemming from presumed prime ministerial ambitions when Dr Manmohan Singh faces serial...

-PTI   Law Minister Salman Khurshid on Monday said the rti Act was being "misused" and officials and even judges feel the transparency law was transgressing into government functioning. "Undoubtedly, it has been misused. But you have to weigh misuse with usefulness of the rti Act. We would like our life to be miserable than the life of a citizen," Khurshid said. Asked about recent remarks of Corporate Affairs Minister M Veerappa...

-PTI   The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is probing several high-profile corruption cases, had demanded only partial exemption from the ambit of the rti Act as per its initial proposal but later pressed for a blanket cover which was approved by the government this year. The file notings provided by the Department of Personnel and Training, under rti Act, show that in 2007, Committee of Secretaries had rejected the demand of...

-The Pioneer   The Government may go for a comparative study of rti in different countries in order to check its misuse. The Government will table Public Procurement Policy Bill and a Bill on electoral reforms to check corruption in the public arena. “Undoubtedly, rti is being misused…Even judges feel that it is hampering the work of courts in matters of decisions and appointments of judges…We can have comparative study on it,” said...