-The Indian Express With the Union cabinet having approved the Right of Citizens for Time Bound Delivery of Goods and Services and Redressal of their Grievances Bill, 2011 (hereafter referred to as the GR bill), Parliament has an opportunity to enact a law that would give citizens a way in which to hold government functionaries accountable. An effective GR act has the potential to transform the relationship between an ordinary Indian...

The Fifth Schedule of the Constitution, the 73rd amendment and the landmark PESA and Forest Rights Act (FRA) have progressively acknowledged the rights, and special powers of the Gram Sabha in deciding developmental projects as well as playing a role in protecting the ecology and forests. But a clutch of clever exemptions in recent months are ensuring that centralised authorities take away the same powers through the back door, without routing...

-Governance Now Experts criticise CIC’s declaration that the attorney general is not a public authority, and thus cannot be under the ambit of RTI Act The chief information commission (CIC) might have struck another blow on the momentous Right to Information Act with its recent ruling that the attorney general (AG) is not bound to answer RTI queries. The declaration has drawn flak from RTI activists, experts and former information commissioners. According to the...

-The Hindu On the occasion of the seventh anniversary of the Right to Information Act, 2005, RTI activists from 16 States came together on Thursday at a public hearing on the Act and appealed to the Union government and Parliament to review the Supreme Court judgment on appointment of Information Commissioners. They called for the review as the judgment “fails” to deal with several important aspects of implementation of the Act....

-The Hindu The participants also called for deletion of Sections 9 to 16 of the Bill dealing with the forming of a "Complaints Scrutiny Panel" besides the Oversight Committee With the Lokpal Bill stuck in limbo, a civil society-led national consultation on judicial accountability was held here on Tuesday in which several shortcomings in the Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill, 2012, as passed by the Lok Sabha were discussed. The consultation was organised...