The youth will not take no for an answer. Five years on, the RTI comes of age. At four feet something, Santosh’s energy belies her petite frame. The school dropout was introduced to RTI through activist Arvind Kejriwal, and now, at Parivartan’s Sundar Nagri office, she holds fort, helping others acquire everything from BPL and ration cards to school admissions through RTI. Threats and attacks by local authorities who dubbed her...

A landmark ruling by the Central Information Commission raises hopes that government functioning will become more transparent. ON August 30, a three-member Bench of the Central Information Commission (CIC), New Delhi, gave a ruling that has the potential to bring under public scrutiny crucial aspects of the functioning of the Central and State governments that have remained hidden from the public glare all these years. The Bench, comprising Chief Information...

The Delhi High Court has asked the Public Information Officer of Directorate of Delhi Health Service(DHS) to pay Rs 50,000 as compensation to a poor man for not providing information pertaining to his treatment in a hospital within the stipulated time under RTI Act. Justice S Muralidhar upheld Central Information Commission's(CIC) August 20 order and dismissed an appeal filed by DHS challenging the compensation awarded by the CIC. "....Any delay...

Five years after the enactment of the Right to Information Act, awareness of the law, its provisions and potential appears to be very low. Marking the completion of five years, in September 2010, of the enactment of the Right to Information Act, the Central Information Commission (CIC) held the fifth annual convention on “RTI: Challenges and Opportunities,” in New Delhi on September 13 and 14. It was largely a gathering of...

Wajahat Habibullah, India’s chief information commissioner, has a towering task. He sees to it that the government gives its citizens information they ask for under the 2005 Right to Information Act, a position that effectively makes him an umpire astride India’s mighty bureaucracy and messy democracy. He is retiring later this month after five years in office—that’s how long the RTI law, which allows citizens to demand official documents, has been...