Revenue dept issues direction to district collectors to provide details and particulars about all the activists seeking information under RTI Act In a move likely to raise a controversy, the state government is Planning to keep all the RTI activists under  scanner. The state revenue department is learnt to have asked the district collectors to submit the details and particulars of all RTI activists from their districts, who have been filing...

  The Centre is now seriously exploring ways to bring pre-school education under Right to Education Act to provide free and compulsory education to children between the age group of four and six.   The move has been initiated following a recommendation made by National Advisory Council (NAC), headed by UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, which stressed that bringing pre-school education under the ambit of RTE Act would ensure continuity in the child’s education. A...

The Information Commission is Planning to set up Division Benches in the State for quick disposal of cases under the Right to Information Act 2005, State Information Commissioner Shekar D. Sajjan Rao told presspersons here on Tuesday. He said a proposal in this regard is already before the commission, and strategies are being chalked out for the systematic setting up of these benches. These Division Benches would function like that of...

With the government serving a severe blow to transparency in the Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects worth one trillion rupees the Central Information Commission has decided to seek Prime Minister’s Manmohan Singh’s intervention. “We will be writing to the Prime Minister that there should not be a blanket ban on making RTI applicable to PPP projects,” said an Information Commissioner, following a decision at the commission’s last meeting. The CIC wanted the...

Union Minister of Rural Development Jairam Ramesh has proposed an “ACTIONS” plan as the guiding principle for the 12th Five Year Plan, putting off the Planning Commission's suggestion to axe Centrally sponsored schemes and give States a free hand to chart their path of development. After his meeting with Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia on Saturday, Mr. Ramesh told The Hindu of the discussion they had on...