-The Indian Express There are certain issues, however, which need be addressed, to make sure that the information commission becomes fully autonomous and thus becomes a constitutional body. Celebrations for 10 years of democratic transparency, in the form of the Right to Information Act, are going on. What we have achieved as yet and what is still someway to go needs to be found out. The many scams, which have successfully helped...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: RTI activists led by Aruna Roy will boycott PM Narendra Modi's inaugural speech at the Central Information Commission's annual convention on Friday to protest against the exclusion of several RTI users and activists from the event citing security concerns. Only a handful of activists including Nikhil Dey, Lokesh Batra, Venkatesh Nayak, Anjali Bhardwaj and Shekhar Singh have been invited for the convention. Traditionally, civil society representatives...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Central Information Commission (CIC) has registered a 94.61% drop in the number of cases in the last two months with an average daily number plummeting from 223 cases in January-July to 12 cases in August-September 2015. There are eight information commissioners including Chief Information Commission (CIC) Vijai Sharma. Disposal of cases has also come down by 11% from an average of 99 cases a day...

-Huffington Post NEW DELHI: Almost 300 cases of murder, assault and harassment relating to information activism have been recorded in the ten years since the Right To Information Act came into force on October 12, 2005, and Maharashtra has emerged as the most dangerous state for RTI activists in the country. While there is no official data on RTI-related crime, figures complied by the Delhi-based Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative found 230 cases...

-The Hindu Cheap imported bags are sold as Indian to government agencies for a higher procurement price. The Union Textiles Ministry has unearthed a major racket in large-scale import of cheap jute bags from Nepal and Bangladesh by Indian manufacturers, many of whom were supplying these to government agencies after putting their own seals. The Jute Packaging Materials (Compulsory Use in Packing Commodities) Act, 1987, mandates that jute bags supplied to government agencies...