-The Times of India   Ignoring objections raised by theBoard of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the government said there were reasonable grounds for bringing the organisation under the Right to Information Act. In a seven-page written statement submitted before the Central Information Commission, thesports ministry said although there was no direct funding of BCCI, it got "substantial indirect funding" from the government in the form of revenue foregone like "concessions...

-The Hindu   Rajya Sabha MP and Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi chaired the 30-member parliamentary panel that presented its voluminous report earlier this month on the Lokpal Bill 2011. The report has points of divergence with both the official Lokpal Bill draft and the Team Anna version. (The Union Cabinet on Tuesday night approved a Bill for the creation of the Lokpal with constitutional status that will have no control over the...

Indian citizens won’t be shielded from prying by government agencies if the Union home ministry gets its way with the proposed privacy law. The ministry is insisting that intelligence and law enforcement agencies be kept out of the purview of the proposed Act, and allowed to continue monitoring the activities and carry out electronic surveillance of citizens, officials familiar with the situation said. The department of personnel and training (DoPT), which is...

-The Business Standard   A data battle is exciting news for us, almost like what breaking news is to many others. We’ve been closely tracking the ‘Curious Case Of West Bengal’s Missing Numbers’ for a few months now. The case is getting more interesting, almost mysterious, as the results of a Right to Information (RTI) petition filed by ISPR Research Fellow Sourjya Bhowmick with the Ministry of Finance show. A few weeks ago,...

Residential schools in the state are the latest additions to the bandwagon of private elite schools contravening the provisions of the national Right to Education (RTE) Act 2009. TOI did a reality check by calling them impersonating as parents and going through their websites. These schools are planning to hold a screening procedure in the form of interactions with parents of students seeking admissions at the elementary level and in primary...