India’s transparency watchdog the Central Information Commission has decided to take upon itself the task of safeguard interests of the Right To Information (RTI) applicants who face harassment for seeking information. In 2010, 28 RTI activists were allegedly attacked after filing their applications and this year two activists Manglaram of Rajasthan and Amarnath. India's transparency watchdog the Central Information Commission has decided to take upon itself the task of safeguard interests of...

Central Information Commission (CIC) has come out with a landmark resolution to combat unending assaults on right to information (RTI) activists. According to the resolution, if the commission receives a complaint regarding an assault on or murder of an information-seeker, it will examine pending RTI applications of the victim and order the departments to publish the requested information suo motu on their websites. The resolution was mooted by information commissioner Shailesh...

Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi sold off his business in 2003 to do something relevant. The Indian Institute of Technology-Mumbai alumnus soon became a prolific user of the Right To Information Act and filed more than 800 RTI applications. He was appointed the Information Commissioner at the Central Information Commission, New Delhi, in 2008. In this freewheeling interview with rediff.com's Priyanka, Gandhi says that appellants must understand that law describes 'information' as something...

-PTI   What does BSP's Mayawati, Congress' Janardhan Dwivedi, BJP's Shahnawaz Husain and jailed Mohd Shahabuddin have in common? They are among the 750 MPs who have bought confiscated arms in the past 25 years, an RTI reply has revealed. While the Arminious and Erma revolvers were a hit among the VIPs during the early 1990s, Webly revolvers replaced them in the late 1990s. However, the last decade saw .22 bore revolvers and 7.65...

-The Economic Times   The Central Vigilance Commissioner has reopened the debate on the mandate of the proposed Lokpal by suggesting that corporates should be brought under the purview of the proposed anti-corruption bill to check graft effectively. He also said that corruption in higher levels of bureaucracy, as also among political executives, should be dealt with by Lokpal, provided there was a proper demarcation of work to avoid overlapping of powers...