-Down to Earth For RTI activists of Bihar the cost of exposing corruption is life Twenty-year-old Rahul Kumar, a right to information (RTI) activist, knew the land mafia was behind his parents' murder. His mother and father were involved in a land dispute in Muzaffarpur's Sirisia Jagdish village. Barely a week after filing an RTI Application to seek information about the murderers, Kumar was kidnapped. A day later, on March 10, 2012,...

-Hueiyen News Service Imphal: Three RTI activists of Thongju Part II Macha Leima RTI Nupi Lup have been reportedly threatened for filing application to seek information related to Thongju Part-II Gram Panchayat. Addressing a press conference in this regard at the office of Macha Leima at Palace Compound here today, Geeta Potshangbam, Assistant Coordinator of Thongju Part II Macha Leima RTI Apunba Nupi Lup, informed that President of Thongju Part II Macha...

-PTI Finance Ministry should appoint a nodal officer to distribute RTI Applications to the concerned central public information officer for processing, the Delhi High Court has directed while upholding the order of Central Information Commission in this regard. The Finance Ministry has five departments-- Economic Affairs, Revenue, Expenditure, Financial Services and Disinvestment. Each one of them have different sets of Central Public Information Officers for processing RTI Applications but there is none to...

-The Hindu The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has served notices to 14 authorities directing them to remove all boards, nails and advertisements from trees falling under their jurisdictions and has directed the authorities to de-concretise the trees. Following a petition filed by Aditya N. Prasad and others, the Tribunal issued notices to three Union Ministries - Ministry of Environment and Forests, Ministry of Human Resources Development and the Ministry of Urban Development...

-The Times of India In a significant move towards transparency, the government on Tuesday said all public authorities should proactively disclose information related to public private partnerships (PPP) projects on their websites. Though the disclosure will be voluntary, this marks a shift from the Centre's stand for the last two years when it stonewalled Central Information Commission (CIC)'s recommendation seeking disclosure of PPP projects and will herald greater transparency. Guidelines issued by the...