Broadcasters attending the United Nations-backed fourth World Electronic Media Forum (WEMF 4) have called for sustained and concrete global action to address the murder of journalists in peacetime and in war. “Most journalists are killed not in war zones but in their own countries as they try to shine the light of the truth into the darkest recesses of their societies,” they said in a declaration adopted unanimously at the...

JAIPUR: Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot on Thursday reiterated his government’s commitment to ensuring better implementation of the Right To Information Act and asked the officials to take “firm steps” to enforce compliance with the statutory provisions. Presiding over a review meeting on the RTI Act at the State Secretariat here, Mr. Gehlot said a relatively better implementation of the law in Rajasthan had been appreciated all over the country. However,...

The Central Information Commission has ordered the IITs to disclose most details of candidates who sat the 2009 entrance examination, rejecting the institutes’ argument that revealing candidates’ names would be a breach of their privacy. India’s apex watchdog for the Right To Information Act has ordered the IITs to reveal the names, addresses, pin codes and marks of all students who appeared in the Joint Entrance Examination this year. In its November...

Several civil society organizations and citizens who believe that a section of government and bureaucracy should not be allowed to dilute the right to information (RTI), staged a daylong protest at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi today (November 14, 2009) against the attempts to dilute the historical Act. (See the press release below for details) The civil society organizations, led by the National Council for the Peoples’ Right to Information...

IN the digital age, the implementation of the Right To Information Act, 2005, is deeply linked to the technology that will be adopted to store public documents and information in digital formats. Thus, the National Policy on Open Standards in E-Governance is critical to “ensure reliable long-term accessibility to public information”, wrote RTI activists, under the aegis of the National Campaign for People’s Rights to Information (NCPRI), in a letter...