In the latest tug-of-war on the applicability of the Right to Information (RTI) Act on government decisions, the law ministry is set to challenge a Central Information Commission (CIC) ruling, directing it to accept the ownership of its legal opinions. The ministry is unhappy with the July 27 ruling of the CIC, in which the transparency watchdog had held that the legal advice tendered by it to various government departments cannot...

Central Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi has put forth a compelling argument for placing public-private partnerships (PPPs) under the ambit of the Right to information (RTI) Act in an order passed earlier this week. Though the order pertains to a specific case in Delhi, it will have far reaching implications for the rest of the country. The Central Information Commission (CIC) recognizes PPPs as public bodies that must provide information under the...

-The Times of India   The Central Information Commission (CIC) has rejected objections raised by the Supreme Court directing it to disclose details of medical reimbursement of judges in the last three years and the rules relating to appointment of retired judges as arbitrators. Clubbing together three RTI applications of activist S C Agrawal, the commission also directed the apex court to disclose the list of all resolutions passed by meetings...

If the Lokpal Bill presented to Parliament is a dud, Anna Hazare and his team must accept their share of the blame. They took their eyes off citizens and concentrated almost exclusively on big people in important positions. What tempted them to take this stance? Is it because enemies in high places are better ego boosters than humble friends? For ordinary people it is of little consequence if the prime minister...

The Right to Information Act was the great white hope of Indian citizens who are consistently denied rightful information. Not only does it specify that most information in the public domain would be provided to citizens by right, but it also ensured that failure to do so by the bloated bureaucracy would result in penalties for erring officials. Trust the government, though, to subvert its own good intentions. The state government has...