-PTI The Department of Space has refused to share details based on which punitive action was taken against former space agency chief G Madhavan Nair and three other retired ISRO scientists, saying the matter is before the Central Administrative Tribunal. Nair immediately hit out at the DoS for maintaining "secrecy on a topic which is so widely talked about", and termed it "unheard of and unimaginable". Under RTI, Nair had first filed an...

Student of Pune-based MIT School of Government (MITSOG), Harshvardhan Reddy, who hails from Karni village in Mahabubnagar district in Andhra Pradesh, has kept the Right to Information (RTI) flag flying high by filing over 300 RTI Applications along with over 200 first appeals within a short span of two years. The first RTI Application, Reddy said, was filed by him against the rural superintendent of police (SP) for delaying his passport...

-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...

That the RTI has become a tightly wedged thorn in the government’s side, punching holes to expose corruption and highlight the government’s inefficiency is no shocker. What is, however, is the Maharashtra government’s recent underhanded amendment of RTI in the state through two notifications in January 2012 without any public consultation. A notification dated 16 January, restricts both the number of subject matter and words in an application such that a...

-The Times of India   A letter from the office of India's Central Information Commission to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently raises serious concerns over two proposals to amend the Right to Information Act through the Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority (NSRA) Bill 2011, which was introduced in the Lok Sabha last September. The first amendment seeks to exempt sensitive information on nuclear radiation safety issues and commercially sensitive information on technology holders from...