-The Times of India   The Haryana government introduced a policy to provide security to whistleblowers and RTI activists in the state if they report to police of specific threats. The state home department issued a notification on this on Tuesday. State home secretary Samir Mathur told TOI that the scale of security cover would depend on the nature of threat perception. "We can provide a cop or a gunman or even a...

The Madras High Court on Friday upheld a notification of the Centre issued in June this year exempting the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) from the purview of the Right to Information (RTI) Act. In its order dismissing a public interest litigation petition challenging the exemption, the First Bench consisting of the Chief Justice M.Y. Eqbal and Justice T.S. Sivagnanam said that indisputably, CBI was investigating several cases of larger public...

RTI activist Shehla Masood's body may be exhumed for further investigations and a re-postmortem. Sources claimed that as the CBIinvestigations progressed, the premium investigating agency is contemplating having another look at the body. Shehla was shot dead on August 16 from point blank range, 22 days back, and was buried the same day. Now the point being pondered by the CBI is that if they go ahead with digging out...

-PTI Sports Minister Ajay Maken has accused former minister Mani Shanker Aiyar of playing an "irreparable obstructionist role" in the Commonwealth Games projects resulting in cost escalation. These comments were made by Maken in his report sought by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after media highlighted letters by Aiyar wherein he had warned about the squandering of money by the Suresh Kalmadi chaired Organising Committee. The communication now made public under the RTI Act...

Private schools may no longer be able to refuse to provide information under the RTI Act under the pretext of being a 'private authority'. The Central Information Commission (CIC), in a recent hearing against a private school, ruled that the school, which receives substantial funds from the government and was controlled by different agencies under the Delhi administration, including the DDA and the Directorate of Education, comes under the ambit...