-The Times of India The Supreme Court on Thursday entertained a petition challenging the Akhilesh Yadav government's first Cabinet decision to do what was statutorily impermissible — re-induct Justice N K Mehrotra as UP lokayukta after he had completed a six-year non-renewable term as the head of the watchdog.  Petitioner advocate Mohd Saeed Siddiqui alleged that the decision to re-employ Justice Mehrotra was in contravention of Section 5 of the UP Lokayukta...

The Bill to regulate medical education and govern human resource in health is a highly diluted version of the original draft. Distortions in the area of Human Resource for Health (HRH) are the root cause of many of the ills facing the health sector in India. Among them is the shortage of qualified medical professionals. The estimated density of 19 health workers (qualified and unqualified) per 10,000 population is nearly 25...

-The Times of India One of India's most unusual experiments with citizen participation in governance is set to come to an end on Friday, when central information commissioner (CIC)Shailesh Gandhi retires. Gandhi, a noted Right To Information (RTI) activist from Mumbai, was appointed to the central information commission in 2008. Under the RTI Act, there is a state information commission in every state for its laws, and a central information commission for...

By repeatedly decrying the CAG and trying to malign the person occupying that Constitutional office, the UPA government is weakening an important pillar of democracy and lowering its own credibility Admitting that there is a great deal of uncertainty and a perception of policy paralysis in the government these days, a senior Cabinet colleague of the prime minister recently observed that it was being created by the activities of (Comptroller and...

A public body cannot refuse information concerning Appointment of employees under the RTI Act on the pretext that it is personal, third party information which is exempt under the RTI Act, the Central Information Commission has held.  Information Commissioner Sushma Singh said that all the information on Appointments made by public authorities would be covered under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. The transparency panel was hearing an appeal filed by...