Do PPP ventures come under rti Act? Planning Commission says not its call THE Planning Commission of India has disowned any responsibility for bringing companies involved in public-private partnership (PPP) projects under the Right to Information (rti) Act. The Commission said individual ministries which have tied up with private companies are responsible for these projects. There were several rti applications filed seeking information on PPPs but the rti Act is not...

When her parents found a groom for her last August, young BPO executive Pratiksha Sharma was reconciled to the idea of arranged marriage but not to any possible dark sides in her would-be husband’s past. So the 25-year-old BBA graduate secretly got in touch with Manish Kumar, her family lawyer in hometown Meerut, who tossed the idea of checking her future life partner’s background using the Right to Information Act...

The CBI has admitted that it received two complaints against former CJI K G Balakrishnan but refused to give details under rti. CBI's Chennai bureau dismissed one complaint citing "vague and unverifiable" allegations and forwarded the second complaint to the New Delhi office for further probe. CBI refused to give details about the complaints in response to an rti query saying that the information related to a third person. Balakrishnan is...

The rti Act was envisaged as a potent weapon to fight corruption by ushering in an age of transparency. Yet powerful men in power have ganged up to throttle the law through deliberate delays and by arm-twisting applicants. A comprehensive look at the law. Aweapon in the hands of people. That was how the Right to Information (rti) Act was envisaged, almost six years back. But the bureaucracy, in connivance with...

I am not unduly worried by the muck being hurled at non-government members of the government-notified drafting panel for the Lokpal Bill and recall the beginning of the village-based rti movement in 1996 in Rajasthan. One of the ridiculous allegations against the agitation leaders was that they had received a hefty commission from a Japanese manufacturer of photocopiers who would profit hugely from the demand for photocopied panchayat documents if...