-The Hindustan Times In a ruling that would be music to the ears of babus, the Supreme Court (SC) has held that a government officer’s personal details such as income-tax (I-T) returns cannot be divulged in response to a query under the Right to Information Act (RTI) unless a larger public interest was involved. Disclosure of such information would amount to unwarranted invasion of an officer’s privacy, it said. “The performance of...

-DNA "Frivolous and vexatious” — these were the words that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh used while addressing this year’s edition of the annual Right To Information (RTI) convention. His choice of words raises several disturbing questions. The PM conveniently ignored the fact that there is no legal definition of what constitutes “frivolous and vexatious” and there is unlikely to be one in the future. Will one person’s understanding of “frivolous” be...

-The Hindu On the occasion of the seventh anniversary of the Right to Information Act, 2005, RTI activists from 16 States came together on Thursday at a public hearing on the Act and appealed to the Union government and Parliament to review the Supreme Court judgment on appointment of Information Commissioners. They called for the review as the judgment “fails” to deal with several important aspects of implementation of the Act....

-The Hindustan Times The Haryana government has notified a policy to provide security to whistleblowers and Right to Information (RTI) activists. An official spokesman said on Tuesday that a whistleblower could be a person who made a complaint or exposed any government office or undertaking or company about an attempt to commit or commission of an offence under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. He said an RTI activist was a person...

-Outlook The venom and aggression with which Congress leaders are responding to a simple question first regarding Mrs Sonia Gandhi and now regarding Mr Robert Vadra proves yet again, if any proof were required, that Congressmen and women are convinced there is a lot to hide  The venom and aggression with which Congress leaders are responding to a simple question being asked first regarding the foreign travels of Mrs Sonia Gandhi and...