-The Indian Express   The Madras High Court today issued a notice to the Union government on a PIL seeking to declare a recent notification exempting Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) from the purview of Right to Information Act as ultra vires or 'beyond the powers' of the Constitution. A Bench comprising Chief Justice M Y Eqbal and Justice T S Sivagnanam directed Additional Solicitor General M Ravindran, who took the notice...

The government says the CBI was taken out of RTI purview as it gathers intelligence and safeguards our economic security. Doesn’t the RTI already have provisions against giving out sensitive information? Section 8(1) of the RTI Act gives all the protection these agencies need. If the CBI does not want to reveal certain aspects of their investigation, they can do so as guided by the RTI Act. There are provisions made...

Classrooms give shelter to cows and buffaloes, while students sit outside in the compound. Children carry their own plates to school for mid-day meals and later rush back home on the pretext of washing the dishes, but never come back for classes. School management committees are told by teachers that no one has the right to seek any information from the school authorities. The scenario gets worse if the panchayat facilitators...

-The Economic Times The Parliamentary Standing Committee on finance has questioned the government's move to introduce a right to food bill when it did not have a single, widely-accepted definition of the poor. The "criteria of identification of the poor remains nebulous," the Yashwant Sinha-headed committee has observed. The proposed food security bill, seen as the largest such legislation anywhere in the world, hinges on the definition of the poor. The...

-The Times of India   The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) was exempted from the purview of the Right to Information (RTI) Act on the sole recommendation of attorney general Goolam Vahanvati. The RTI exemption for the CBI announced by the central government on June 9 was in contradiction with suggestions made by the law ministry and also department of personnel and training (DoPT), the nodal agency for RTI implementation. This was unearthed...