-The Times of India GUNTUR: Taking serious objection to the queries being raised by the public information officers (PIOs) when information is sought under the Right to Information ( RTI) Act, state information commissioner M Ratan has said that the PIOs have no business to ask questions. He said that providing information sought by the applicant was the job of the PIOs and putting questions to the applicant was not tolerable. Ratan...

-The Hindustan Times Government officials riding high on hopes that privacy concerns could blunt the right to information are in for disappointment. An expert panel set up to build a framework for a privacy regulation in India has brushed aside suggestions that the information law was trampling upon privacy of public servants or individuals in public life. The Justice (retd) Ajit Prakash Shah panel has told the government that privacy was only...

-Deccan Herald The Central Information Commission (CIC) has suggested that the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), the nodal ministry to frame RTI rules, to refrain from splitting the queries made in one application and instead prepare response after compiling all details. Chief Information Commissioner Satyananda Mishra asked for revising the present system of sending different queries in one RTI application to different information officers. “Unless the RTI application contains unmanageably a large...

-The Times of India Unjustified judicial intervention could compromise the good the right to information is doing Perhaps the biggest contribution of our Parliament towards promoting greater accountability in independent India is the enactment of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005. If, as they say, information is power, then the RTI Act has been a veritable 'Brahmastra' in the hands of the Indian public. It has been extremely successful in...

-The Hindustan Times Underprivileged people of Muktsar district, the home turf of Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal, received a lion's share for construction of houses in 2011 in the run-up to the assembly elections, it has emerged. Funds to the tune of over Rs. 40 crore were pumped into Muktsar district alone from the social infrastructure fund (SIF) to help economically weaker sections (EWS) construct or repair their houses, while five districts,...