-The Times of India   Founder member of the National Campaign for People's Right to Information (NCPRI) Aruna Roy on Saturday condemned the statement of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the Right To Information Act was adversely affecting deliberations in the government and deterring honest officials from expressing their views on file. Roy was speaking at a seminar on 'Strengthening participatory democracy: Role of RTI' at the International Centre Goa, Dona Paula. "The Prime...

Chief Information Commissioner Satyananda Mishra demanded on Friday that the Central Information Commission be upgraded to the status of a Constitutional authority along the lines of the Election Commission of India and the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. RTI circles interpreted Mr. Mishra's intervention, coming after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's call for a critical look at the Right to Information Act, as an effort to safeguard the Act and the...

-The Hindu   It should not hit deliberative processes and thwart honest officials from airing views Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called for a ‘critical look' at the Right to Information (RTI) Act to ensure that it does not adversely affect the ‘deliberative processes' of the government and discourage honest officials from articulating their views. Addressing the 6th Annual Convention of Information Commissioners here on Friday, Dr. Singh hoped that the deliberations would also...

-The Economic Times   Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid's remarks on the need to revisit the Right to Information (RTI) Act, on the purported reason that its 'misuse' was hampering 'institutional efficiency', displays the discomfort amongst the political and bureaucratic classes over an Act that has unprecedentedly empowered ordinary citizens. Talk of amending the Act on those and similar grounds is nothing but those classes seeking to disempower citizens, and return to...

Central Information Commission (CIC) has come out with a landmark resolution to combat unending assaults on right to information (RTI) activists. According to the resolution, if the commission receives a complaint regarding an assault on or murder of an information-seeker, it will examine pending RTI applications of the victim and order the departments to publish the requested information suo motu on their websites. The resolution was mooted by information commissioner Shailesh...