-The Times of India   LOHARDAGA: The Right to Information (RTI) Act has exposed a scam worth over Rs 32 lakh. The report received under RTI has been submitted as supportive evidence in the case that was lodged recently with the Senha police station (Case No. 13/12) under various sections of IPC for cheating the government and the public. The complainant, Ganesh Sahu, a social activist has accused three concerned engineers in the...

High courts have failed to adhere to the Central Information Commission's directive to follow the Right to Information (RTI) Act rulebook. CIC, the final appellate authority for RTI Act, had ordered all the high courts to disclose complete information of the organisation, employees, salaries drawn, decisions taken and budget allocated, on their websites by April 1. However, not a single high court has complied with the direction. In January, CIC Satyananda...

-PTI The Department of Space has refused to share details based on which punitive action was taken against former space agency chief G Madhavan Nair and three other retired ISRO scientists, saying the matter is before the Central Administrative Tribunal. Nair immediately hit out at the DoS for maintaining "secrecy on a topic which is so widely talked about", and termed it "unheard of and unimaginable". Under RTI, Nair had first filed an...

On Saturday last, as the government was highlighting with much fanfare the achievements under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 in the past two years, the RTE Division of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) — entrusted with the responsibility of monitoring the implementation of the Act — was virtually winding up. It all happened as the term of Kiran Bhatty, the...

-The Times of India   A letter from the office of India's Central Information Commission to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently raises serious concerns over two proposals to amend the Right to Information Act through the Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority (NSRA) Bill 2011, which was introduced in the Lok Sabha last September. The first amendment seeks to exempt sensitive information on nuclear radiation safety issues and commercially sensitive information on technology holders from...