-The Indian Express The debate about Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, is growing heated. As more cases of its abuse surface, even Communications and IT Minister Kapil Sibal has begun to mull changes to the act. The key question to be probed is whether individual actions booked under the provision are isolated instances of abuse or the section itself flawed. For that, we need to first explore how...

-The Times of India The Supreme Court on Thursday said it had directed appointment of retired judges as heads of information commissions at the Centre and state level to ensure their independence as many were headed by persons who "have been in the good books of government". "You will find the chief information commissioners, both at the Centre and state level, are persons who have been in the good books of the...

-The Indian Express The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear the Centre’s plea to review its verdict on amending the RTI Act to ensure that only serving and retired judges of the apex court and chief justices of high courts could head the central and state information commissions. A Bench of Justices A K Patnaik and Swatanter Kumar decided to hear the review petition in the open court. Asserting that the court...

-The Hindu The intention behind the move to make the CAG a multimember body is not to activate the Shunglu Committee’s report but a desire to clip the auditor’s wings During the last few days there have been many comments on the report that the government of India was considering a proposal to make the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) a multimember body. The move has been widely seen as...

-The Telegraph Private universities have mushroomed across India, growing from just 10 six years ago to 145 today in a demand-driven surge that has drawn allegations of irregularities, including franchising out courses in violation of rules. Several academics have also questioned the standard of education in most of these varsities, set up by state Legislatures through enactment of laws. “Private universities are created by state Legislatures so the Government of India has no...