Rajan Ghate, Goa's one-man-army against the illegal purchase of land by foreigners, is one among five Indian citizens to be awarded the National RTI Awards 2010 by the National RTI Secretariat, Uttar Pradesh. The awards ceremony will be held in January 2011. During his days as the state president of the Nationalist Youth Congress from September 2005 to October 2010, Ghate single-handedly agitated against the illegal purchase of land in...

Right to Information (RTI) activist Vijay Kumbhar has demanded that there should be some restriction on supply of free information to the applicants belonging to below poverty line (BPL). As per RTI Act, 2005, section 7, the applicant would pay the fee as prescribed for information to be provided in printed or in electronic format. But no such fee shall be charged from the persons who are below poverty line (BPL). Kumbhar...

A day after Goa governor S S Sidhu was summoned by the State Information Commission (SIC) for denying information under the Right To Information (RTI) Act, social activist Aires Rodrigues filed a caveat in the high court of Bombay at Goa anticipating that the governor may move the HC against the SIC notice. In his caveat before the high court, Rodrigues has prayed that no order be passed without notice...

Adjuvants with severe physiological side effect have been administered to hundreds of children during vaccine trials conducted at a government hospital in Indore over the last few years, and that too without the approved Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). The trials conducted on at least 836 children at the Chacha Nehru Bal Chikitsalaya, the paediatric division of the Maharaja Yashwantrao Hospital, were spiked with adjuvants that contain high levels of mercury, aluminium,...

In an unprecedented move, the Goa Information Commission has summoned governor Dr S S Sidhu for claiming that the Right to Information Act didn't apply to his office. The commission took umbrage to the governor's attempt to escape accountability under RTI by claiming the his office wasn't a ''public authority'' as defined in the transparency law. The governor's stand flies in the face of the Act's scheme under which all government offices,...