The State Information Commission (SIC) will hold court to dispose appeals against principal information officers (PIOs) for denying information under the Right To Information (RTI) Act through videoconferencing from its Patna office from July 28. The SIC's videoconferencing facility would be inaugurated at the SK Memorial hall on July 28. The new facility would save at least three days and the disposal of the case would be instant, state information...

According to a research undertaken by a PhD student, the RTI Act has not helped improve governance. Saharsh Yadav (27), who is working on a thesis on Implementation and Impact of Right to Information Act on governance, said the outcome of the Act was not as expected. "We are yet to taste the fruits of this act," said Yadav, who has completed his master's degree on public administration from Vikram University,...

  Revenue dept issues direction to district collectors to provide details and particulars about all the activists seeking information under RTI Act In a move likely to raise a controversy, the state government is planning to keep all the RTI activists under  scanner. The state revenue department is learnt to have asked the district collectors to submit the details and particulars of all RTI activists from their districts, who have been filing...

Even though urban people are considered 'more aware' than their rural counterparts, in Andhra Pradesh, it is the rural people who are getting increasingly aware about the use of Right to Information Act, 2005 as compared to urbanites. According to the data furnished by the Andhra Pradesh Information Commission, while the awareness level among rural public about RTI has been sharply increasing every year, it is showing a declining trend among...

In a season when every self-styled warrior against corruption is trying to look for a new weapon to fight it, my guest today is Satyananda Mishra, Chief Information Commissioner—someone who has in his control the strongest of those weapons, the RTI. Actually when it all began, nobody thought it would be so effective. In a period of five-and-a-half years, it has touched the hearts and minds of people. The number of...