Newly appointed state chief information commissioner (SCIC) Vilas Patil admitted that there are lacunaes in the Right to Information Act. He felt that this needs to be addressed urgently so that the act can be smoothly implemented. Patil added that due to this lacunae the percentage of recovery of penalties imposed on the errant officers duringimplementation is either low or unknown. After the swearing-in on Thursday, Patil took charge from outgoing SCIC...

An approach road to a Dalit colony in Ittikkal Agaram village, 15 km from Krishnagiri, has been blocked with a barbed wire fence by a section of people. According to the people in the colony, the fence was erected by the locals with the support of the ‘Ooor Goundar' (Village Leader). The Communist Party of India (Marxist) is planning to engage in direct action to remove the fence, party MLA S. K....

India’s abject failure to address hunger and malnutrition has been laid bare yet again by its poor ranking — 67th of 84 countries — on a global hunger index put together by the International Food Policy Research Institute. The fact that it is home to 42 per cent of the world’s underweight children in the under-5 age group has resulted in the poor ranking. This is reason for concern as child...

Nikhil Dey, convener of the National Campaign for People's Right to Information, has been in the forefront of the RTI movement. He speaks to  Bharat Dogra  about the achievements of the RTI and the challenges ahead: How do you assess the overall impact of the RTI? Sceptics say corruption is increasing more than even before. What I can assure them is corruption would have been much higher without the RTI. In schemes...

RTI activists from Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad  have urged state governor K Sankaranarayanan to issue directions to the state information commission to update information on its official website. In a letter to the governor, the activists have pointed out that it is mandatory for all government and semi-government offices to voluntarily provide information of the office under section 4 of the RTI Act. "However, information about the commission's address, telephone numbers and...