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...

-Outlook   The Arunachal RTI Activists Forum (ARTIAF) has called a 24-hour Itanagar bandh on July 29 demanding resignation of Health Minister Atum Welly and Chief Information Commissioner Y D Thongchi. The health minister recently landed in a controversy after his son and daughter allegedly submitted fake educational certificates for government jobs while his three aides were arrested on the charge of plotting to murder an RTI activist who brought the matter...

The Supreme Court criticises the Chhattisgarh and Central governments and orders the disbanding of Salwa Judum. THE case Nandini Sundar vs State of Chhattisgarh arose out of a writ petition (civil) filed in 2007 in the Supreme Court by Nandini Sundar, a Professor of sociology at the Delhi School of Economics; Ramachandra Guha, a historian; and E.A.S. Sarma, former Secretary to Government of India and former Commissioner, Tribal Welfare, Government...

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...

If you buy electricity from Reliance Energy, you can now get any information from the parent company — Reliance Infrastructure — using the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005. The state information commission has stated that suburban power supplier Reliance Infrastructure (RInfra) comes under the ambit of the RTI Act. Justifying the order, the commission said though RInfra is a private company, Reliance Energy provides essential public service, and hence should come...