-DNA As cases of denial of information under the Right to Information Act pile up, the Reserve Bank of India approached various courts as many as nine times against the Central Information Commission’s (CIC) orders directing it to provide information. Seven of these cases are now pending in the Delhi High Court while two are in the Bombay High Court. Not only has the RBI preferred litigation against providing information, the central...

-The Times of India BELGAUM: Rs 198 lakh of the taxpayers money was spent when the President was in Belgaum to inaugurate the Suvarna Vidhana Soudha in October. The government renovated the Circuit House (CH) ahead of President Pranab Mukherjee's visit. It spent over Rs 161 lakh on renovation and around Rs 37 lakh on furnishing the room, where Mukherjee spent just an hour on October 11. RTI activist Bhimappa Gadad from...

-Governance Now Experts criticise CIC’s declaration that the attorney general is not a public authority, and thus cannot be under the ambit of RTI Act The chief information commission (CIC) might have struck another blow on the momentous Right to Information Act with its recent ruling that the attorney general (AG) is not bound to answer RTI queries. The declaration has drawn flak from RTI activists, experts and former information commissioners. According to the...

-The Hindu Bangalore: Police Commissioner B.G. Jyothi Prakash Mirji, who was summoned by the Lokayukta Court on Tuesday for failing to provide police protection to RTI activist T.J. Abraham, assured the court that he would immediately provide him with security cover. Mr. Abraham, who has filed cases in the Lokayukta Court against several powerful politicians, bureaucrats as well as businessmen, had recently filed a memo to the court stating he apprehended threat...

-The Times of India LUCKNOW: In response to a query under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the the Central Information Commission (CIC), New Delhi, denied it had any 'frivolous or personal-in-nature' applications available in the records. This is against statement of chief information commissioner (CIC) Satyanand Mishra at a seminar on RTI, organized in the city recently, in which he said, people had not understood the basics of the RTI...