RIGHT TO INFORMATION


Despite COVID-19 being a singular and colossal public health disaster directly affecting crores of citizens, public authorities are not abiding by the suo moto disclosures under Section 4 of the Right to Information (RTI) Act and give such excuses as its PIOs (principal information officers)...

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Aravind Natarajan 10 September 2020
In a boost to furthering the impact of the Right to Information (RTI) act, Justice S Vaidyanathan of the Madras High Court has ruled that Public Information Officers (PIO) who deliberately and tactfully deny information are unfit to hold office of a PIO and must be shown the door says a...

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The Arogya Setu app developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) that comes under the ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) in April 2020 and supposed to help users to identify whether they are at risk of a COVID-19 infected individual around them. It has been...

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Is it a case of no lessons learnt or deliberate attempt to scuttle the Right to Information (RTI) Act? Once again, with the retirement of chief central information commissioner (CCIC) Bimal Julka on the 27th August, the post of the chief information commissioner (CIC) in Delhi has fallen...

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Six civilians were injured after an unprovoked ceasefire violation by Pakistan in the first week of August this year, along the line of control (LoC) in the Tangdhar Sector of Kupwara.   In fact, hundreds of families residing in several villages along the LoC suffer physical injuries,...

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In 2019, a right to information (RTI) query revealed that Kolhapur floods were caused due to 1,250 acres of red and blue flood-line area, which is a no-development zone, being used for construction activity along the banks of the Panchganga River. This led to the National Green Tribunal...

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After the verdict in November 2017, where the Supreme Court (SC) ordered that the Office of the Chief Justice is a public authority under the Right to Information Act (RTI), the apex court has so far rejected 13,394 requests and appeals but has given reasons for the rejections only 9,293...

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Last fortnight, on a Bangauru based RTI applicant’s second hearing appeal for seeking income-tax (I-T) details of her estranged husband, chief information commissioner (CIC) Neeraj Kumar Gupta upheld the public information officer’s (PIO’s) denial of information stating that, she  is not...

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Last week, news reports stated that Punjab’s State Information Commission (PSIC), had, despite the COVID-19 lock-down, heard 1,231 second appeals and complaints, of which 792 were heard through video conferencing of the National Informatics Centre (NIC) in district headquarters, 277 through...

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As per the government resolution (GR) issued by the general administration department (GAD) of Maharashtra government on 20 July 2020,  the reasons given for the sudden transfer of 14 Indian Administrative Services (IAS) officers in various parts of the State, between 11th July and 14th July...

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With disposal of second appeals and complaints to information commissioners (ICs) taking more than a year or two, frustrating citizen’s effort to procure their rightful information in good time, a group of RTI activists have slammed a legal notice on Maharashtra’s state chief information...

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Last week, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) booked the chairman of the GVK group of companies, GVK Reddy and his son, Sanjay Reddy, managing director of the Mumbai International Airport Ltd (MIAL) for financial fraud to the tune of Rs705 crore, in the running of the airport, thus...

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Considering the large number of pending second appeals in the Maharashtra State Information Commission, the Supreme Court (SC) in its 15 February 2019 order had observed that the SIC (state information commission)  should function at its full strength of 11 commissioners (chief and 10...

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The cynicism we hear so often about the RTI Act being ineffective, is thankfully almost always countered by an effective use of this transparency law by citizens, for the larger public good.   One such recent example is that of compelling the union health ministry to disclose...

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While directing all the information commissions in Maharashtra to begin second appeal hearings online from Monday, 15th June, Sumit Mullick, state chief information commissioner (SCIC) himself disposed of 20 second appeals via the use of Google Meet App in a single day, thus keeping up his...

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In what can be termed as a major victory for the Right to Information (RTI) activists’ campaign through a series of conferences through Zoom, the Maharashtra state information commission (MSIC), which had gone into hibernation during this lock-down, has finally agreed to conduct second...

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Last week, the Central Information Commission (CIC) slammed the Directorate General of Health Services (DCGI) for replying under RTI that the file containing a crucial report pertaining to recommendations made by it in 2013 while granting approval for new drugs and clinical trials, which were...

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A study by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), last fortnight, https://www.moneylife.in/article/covid-19-puts-a-brake-on-rti-act-all-28-state-information-commissions-in-limbo/60170.html had reported that only one of the 29 information commissions, from one Central Information...

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For all those political leaders, bureaucrats, judges and heads of public institutions who have been complaining since the inception of the Right to Information (RTI) Act in 2005, that public information officers (PIOs) are overburdened with applications, a study reveals that PIOs of the...

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With 28 out of the 29 state information commissions (SCICs) across the country hardly working and with most public information officers (PIOs) and first appellate authorities (FAAs) too busy with COVID-19 duties, the use of Right to Information (RTI) act has almost come to a...

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