The only RTI activist appointed in the Central Information Commission as an Information Commissioner, Shailesh Gandhi has set the bar high for the other Commissioners by clearing nearly 20,000 cases in four years. On Friday, July 6, as he demitted office at the end of his term, he spoke to Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar about how to improve the delivery of information through the Right to Information Act. Excerpts. How do you...

-The Hindu Observing that “Chief Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi has demonstrated complete lack of judicial discipline”, the Delhi High Court has quashed two orders passed by him on appeals by a RTI activist against denial of information sought by him from the Registrar of Companies regarding a company. The Registrar of Companies had denied information to the activist under the Right to Information Act saying that it was not within the purview...

-Deccan Herald The files relating to framing of rules for empanelment of officers to the post of additional secretary and secretary at the Centre cannot be disclosed as these are Cabinet papers exempt from disclosure under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the government has maintained. This stand of the government was reiterated in a letter to the Central Information Commission (CIC) by the Cabinet secretariat’s under secretary. The government decided to approach...

Appointments to India's secretive external intelligence arm, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), could come under public scrutiny, with the Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) upholding an order that the administrative process of an appointment is not exempted from the RTI.  Although the agency is likely to further challenge the order, the CIC ruling does throw open RAW's functioning and officials to RTI applications.  Passing an order on an RTI query seeking information...

-PTI   A query posted by a 10-year-old girl under the Right to Information Act (RTI) regarding father of nation status to Mahatma Gandhi has raised a piquant situation before the government. In February this year, Aishwarya Parashar, a class sixth student, sent an RTI application to the central public information officer of Prime Minister's office seeking a photocopy of the order through which Mahatma Gandhi was declared as father of the nation. From...