-Hindustan Times A 6% fall between 2015-16 and 2016-17 was reported in RTI applications filed with the 1,950 public authorities of the Central government, which receives maximum information applications followed by Maharashtra and Karnataka. The right to information law meant to empower Indians and bring transparency in governance appeared to be losing steam with the number of queries going down mainly because of stone-walling of information by officials and slow disposal of...

-IANS New Delhi: Press freedom in India has deteriorated in 2018 and three journalists have been killed in the first four months, media watchdog The Hoot said, stating that "journalists continue to be vulnerable". The number of killings documented by the Hoot report for the first four months was the same as in the whole of 2017. "They were killed in connection with their reporting, judging by what initial investigations show," it said. India...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Abhijit Prabhudesai, a Goa-based environmentalist, has travelled to Delhi six times since last December to appear before the National Green Tribunal’s (NGT’s) principal bench, which is hearing his petition on environmental concerns regarding the Mopa airport in north Goa. His plea was being heard by NGT’s Pune bench until the tribunal started facing severe shortage of judicial members, closing it down temporarily, along with its regional benches...

-News18.com In an interview with News18’s Rupashree Nanda, Dreze, who was a member of Sonia Gandhi’s National Advisory Council and an architect of the National Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), says that there have been no major initiatives in the social field in the last four years, with the partial exception of Swachh Bharat. Government data reveal that the Indian economy is growing at a robust rate but noted economist Jean Dreze believes...

-The Hindu NITI Aayog member says national health scheme will aim to keep cheaters out Mumbai: To curb illegal mass surgeries, policy makers working on the National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS) are planning to restrict surgical procedures like hysterectomies and appendectomies to public sector hospitals. Dr Vinod Paul, member, NITI Aayog, said on Saturday that such procedures could also be dropped from the scheme. “Procedures like these can be misused. We have...