Attorney General Goolam Vahanvati vetted the Centre’s plan to take the CBI out of the purview of the rti Act on the ground that it was also involved in intelligence-gathering as well as safeguarding the country’s economic security. And the government cited this opinion to overrule senior functionaries, including some members of the Committee of Secretaries headed by Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar, who had cautioned against such a move. Now,...

Days after the government placed the CBI under the category of organisations “exempt” from the rti Act, the country’s first Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah has “requested” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to let the Central agency remain within the ambit of the transparency Act as “public interest would best be served by keeping these bodies transparent and accountable within the limits of the law”. However, the CBI has defended the move...

-The Times of India   The Central Information Commission has asked the Prime Minister's Office to make public charges of corruption against former telecom minister A Raja along with views of various officials on them expressed in the form of file notings. A rti applicant had sought to know why Raja was kept in the Cabinet despite serious allegations of corruption against him. The information was denied to him by the PMO saying...

MiD-Day's Akela was arrested under the Official Secrets Act over exposé on poor storage there WhileMiD-Day journalist Tarakant Dwivedi alias Akela was arrested and jailed last month under the Official Secrets Act (OSA), 1923, for doing a story on the poor storage of sophisticated weaponry at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST), a Right to Information (rti) query has revealed that the Railway Protection Force (RPF) armoury at the CST was not a...

-The Times of India   The CBI has refused to make public information about disproportionate asset cases against government servants, including bureaucrats and ministers, after last week's exemption under rti Act given by the government. The Centre, through a notification issued on June 9, placed the agency in the organisations listed in the second schedule of Section 24 of the rti Act which also comprises intelligence and security agencies. "The government...