With the Delhi High Court keeping an eye on violation of labour laws at Commonwealth Games construction sites, the Delhi government has decided to approach the workers by organising awareness camps. These camps will be organised between May 1 and 7 at all nine districts of the city, the court was told on Wednesday. The workers would be told about their rights relating to wages, safety measures and other beneficial...

It has quickly adapted itself to open information culture: experts  “Indian Act seems to have emerged from grass roots; Pakistan's an executive initiative” Very little RTI awareness among common people in the region India's success with getting the Right To Information Act up and running came in for much praise on Wednesday at a regional workshop organised jointly by the Indian Institute of Public Administration and the World Bank-funded Governance Partnership Facility. The...

Days after several persons were hospitalised after exposure to radioactive waste at a West Delhi scrap market, it emerges that the only data available with the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) is almost three years old. And even that is alarming: 5,300 tonnes of hazardous waste was generated in the Capital every year, according to the survey last conducted in 2007. The state pollution control body has no information on...

At least 70 Lok Sabha MPs, including former prime minister HD Deve Gowda, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad and cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu, have not yet disclosed details of their assets, a Right to Information (RTI) application has revealed. The information was obtained in reply to an application filed by RTI activist Subhash Chandra Agrawal with the Lok Sabha secretariat, seeking names of the members who have not...

Contents of a four-page letter from Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh shows the country’s top judge recommending the inclusion of a specific clause in the Right To Information Act, 2005 to exempt judiciary from the transparency law’s ambit. The CJI in his letter dated September 16, 2009 pointed out how the “framers of the RTI Act” failed to visualise the extent to which...