Appellants in quasi-judicial bodies normally find it difficult to track the status of their applications. The Central Information Commission has found a way out to help appellants track status of their applications. The transparency watchdog has decided to list status of all pending cases on its website to help the applicants find the reasons for why their appeal was not taken up while those of others were considered. There had been instances...

-The Deccan Herald   The Central Information Commission has held that the Right to Information (RTI) Act cannot be used to get details of orders or judgments from the Supreme Court or the High Courts.  Significantly, the transparency panel clarified that since the Supreme Court as well as High Courts prescribed their own set of rules for providing judicial records, the information seekers could not use the RTI Act for that purpose. “We have...

 The Central Information Commission has ordered the Command Hospital to allow RTI applicant Kannan Nambiar to inspect certain records for as many as six hours. Chief Election Commissioner M L Sharma, who issued the directive last week, rejected the contentions of the Command Hospital for denying information to Nambiar under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. Nambiar, a medical vendor, had shot in to limelight in December 2010 when on his...

In a move that would usher in greater transparency, the Central Information Commission (CIC) ordered that legal opinion sought internally by the government can be made public.   The decision is also significant because it could compound the political problems of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), which is impacted by a series of allegations of corruption, some of which have been revealed through filing of queries under Right to Information (RTI). The...

Supreme Court's CPIO asked to give information to RTI activist Subash Chandra Aggarwal in 10 days The Central Information Commission (CIC) has held that all information in possession of the office of the Chief Justice of India is not completely exempt from disclosure under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. “While we concede that due to the stay granted by the Supreme Court [in the assets case], all information relating to the...