-IANS   The Bihar State Information Commission (SIC) today launched avideo conferencing system for quicker hearing and disposal of complaints related to the Right To Information (RTI) Act, officials said. State Chief Information Commissioner (CIC)) A.K. Choudhary said the SIC will help dispose complaints against principal information officers for denying information under theRTI Act to people. Complaints from all over the state will be heard in Patna through video conferencing, saving...

The State Information Commission (SIC) will hold court to dispose appeals against principal information officers (PIOs) for denying information under the Right To Information (RTI) Act through videoconferencing from its Patna office from July 28. The SIC's videoconferencing facility would be inaugurated at the SK Memorial hall on July 28. The new facility would save at least three days and the disposal of the case would be instant, state information...

Even though urban people are considered 'more aware' than their rural counterparts, in Andhra Pradesh, it is the rural people who are getting increasingly aware about the use of Right to Information Act, 2005 as compared to urbanites. According to the data furnished by the Andhra Pradesh Information Commission, while the awareness level among rural public about RTI has been sharply increasing every year, it is showing a declining trend among...

In a season when every self-styled warrior against corruption is trying to look for a new weapon to fight it, my guest today is Satyananda Mishra, Chief Information Commissioner—someone who has in his control the strongest of those weapons, the RTI. Actually when it all began, nobody thought it would be so effective. In a period of five-and-a-half years, it has touched the hearts and minds of people. The number of...

With the government serving a severe blow to transparency in the Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects worth one trillion rupees the Central Information Commission has decided to seek Prime Minister’s Manmohan Singh’s intervention. “We will be writing to the Prime Minister that there should not be a blanket ban on making RTI applicable to PPP projects,” said an Information Commissioner, following a decision at the commission’s last meeting. The CIC wanted the...