-Civil Society News New Delhi: People’s movements represent multiple hopes and efforts. As they stretch over time, who did what and when or how something happened or didn’t gets forgotten. Chroniclers are needed, but hard to find. If they come from within it is most likely they won’t be objective and if they are on the outside chances are that empathy and understanding will be missing. The Right to Information movement...

-The Hindu New Delhi: Reena, a single mother, has been unable to acquire Scheduled Caste certificates for her children as her RTI (Right to Information) application filed in 2016, still remains unanswered. “I had applied for Scheduled Caste certificates for my children but was told by the Revenue Department that the caste certificate of the father needs to be provided. In 2016, I filed the RTI application seeking information on the documents...

-The Economic Times New Delhi: The government is planning to rope in domain experts from within and outside the country to ensure a smooth rollout and monitoring of ‘Ayushman Bharat’, its ambitious health insurance scheme for the poor. Niti Aayog, the government’s premier think tank, will come out with guidelines for setting up the project monitoring unit (PMU) for Ayushman Bharat, also known as National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS), an official told...

-NDTV (with inputs from IANS)   RTI responses on EVMs have highlighted irregularities in everything from the number of voting machines the Election Commission bought to the price it paid for them. New Delhi: Responses to a series of Right to Information requests have thrown up multiple red flags in the Election Commission's acquisition and use of EVMs or Electronic Voting Machines. From huge inconsistencies in the records of the machines acquired...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Central Information Commission on Tuesday said there should be no delay in payment of pension to senior citizens on the pretext of linking accounts with a beneficiary's Aadhaar number. "In the name of linking to Aadhaar or other such conditions, the public authority cannot delay the payment of pension to senior citizens and retired employees in view of their post-retirement requirements," information commissioner Sridhar Acharyulu said. He said...