RIGHT TO INFORMATION


It may be recalled that in order to combat air pollution in Delhi, one of the flagship initiatives tom-tommed by the Delhi government was to install anti-smog guns, anti-smog towers and other such machines. In fact, the lieutenant governor of Delhi, along with the municipal commissioner, had a...

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Moneylife Digital Team 27 September 2024
Going one step ahead by sharing dates related to the appointment of Madhabi Puri Buch as chairperson of Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI), the Union ministry of finance (FinMin) denied sharing information on dates when Ms Buch and her family declared their financial assets. This was...

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Moneylife Digital Team 27 September 2024
Commodore (Cmde) Lokesh Batra (retd) was felicitated by Moneylife Foundation and prominent right-to-information (RTI) activists from Mumbai for his tireless dedication to promoting transparency, accountability, and good governance through the Right to Information (RTI) Act. Cmde Batra's...

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Considering that the issuance of contracts through tenders in various infrastructure projects has been mired in controversy—particularly after the recent collapse of bridges, roads and airport ceilings—the information commissioner’s directive to make all tenders transparent is a hope for better...

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Satyendra Wankhade (Bar  and   Bench) 24 September 2024
The Supreme Court has issued notice to all States and Union Territories (UTs) on a contempt of court petition alleging non-compliance with directions to set up online Right to Information (RTI) portals (Anuj Nakade v Dr Poonam Malakondaiah Govt. of Andhra Pradesh & Ors).   A Bench of Chief...

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Moneylife Digital Team 20 September 2024
Except for the dates of appointment, market regulator Securities & Exchange Board of India (SEBI) does not have any information readily available on its chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch's appointment, her application for the post, declaration of assets and cases where she had recused herself due...

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Alleging that many fake disabled employees are working in the Trivandrum central railway station, who allegedly got jobs with the help of fake writers during their written examination, an RTI applicant’s request for the list of names of disabled personnel employed in the Southern Railways, was...

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Recently, Maharashtra’s information commissioner, Makarand Ranade, disposed 2,500 complaints filed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, all from one applicant, admonishing him for the overbearing number of applications.   Last week, on 6th September, central information commissioner...

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While sexual assaults in West Bengal and Maharashtra are making news, the disclosure of the Hema committee report, which was submitted to the Kerala state government way back in 2019 with investigations and recommendations for women working in the Kerala film industry facing sexual harassment...

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Anjali Bhardwaj  and   Amrita Johri (The Wire) 22 August 2024
Citing ‘whistleblower documents’, US-based short seller Hindenburg Research has levelled allegations of conflict of interest against the chairperson of India’s capital markets regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). SEBI has been investigating charges of stock...

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Did you know that the long-forgotten noble mission of the Bhoodan Movement initiated by Acharya Vinoba Bhave in the 1950s—wherein thousands of acres of land were given away as donation by farmland owners to the landless for social equity—has been mired in irregularities, despite a bhoodan...

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In an order that would make pension funds more transparent to retired employees, the central information commissioner (CIC) has ordered, last week, that the income and expenditure statement as well as the balance sheet of the LIC Employees’ Pension Fund is public information under the Right to...

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Against the backdrop of the scandalous Puja Khedkar case—wherein disability certificates were abused and misused for her entry into the Indian administrative services (IAS) and more such cases tumbled out—Maharashtra’s information commissioner has ordered their transparency by disclosure on the...

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Moneylife Digital Team 07 August 2024
More than Rs54,657.87 crore is lying as unclaimed money in inoperative accounts of the employees' provident fund (EPF), reveals information received under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.     An application filed under the RTI Act by Aakash Goel, an engineer, management graduate and...

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The contentious issue of the amount of Indian land ceded to China, which is guarded like a top secret but strongly taken up by veteran politician Dr Subramanian Swamy, led to the central information commissioner (CIC), last week, ordering the public information officer (CPIO) of the ministry of...

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In an order so rare, of a central information commissioner (CIC), the ‘arrogant, evasive and uncouth behaviour’ of a bunch of officials from State Bank of India (SBI) at Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, who represented the second appeal hearing last fortnight, stole the show, as it formed the...

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When privilege becomes the norm, equality can seem oppressive. This, in a nutshell, captures the essence of the controversial Indian Administrative Service (IAS) probationary officer Puja Khedkar, whose maiden posting in the Pune district collectorate has metamorphosed into a controversy, that...

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There are right to information (RTI) applicants who invoke the sunshine law for the sake of getting information but there are those who use the information to fight for a social cause until it reaches the logical end.   In the past two weeks, the Bombay High Court (HC) ordered the divisional...

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The proposed Rs72,000 crore infrastructure upgrade on Great Nicobar island which is being sternly contested by environmentalists as a 'grave threat' to the island's indigenous inhabitants, and the hue and cry over felling of 100,000 trees which would damage its fragile ecosystem, is a huge...

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The Right to Information (RTI) Act is not only invoked for civic and social issues; more and more applications are being filed for information related to marital discord. For example, details of income tax returns and property tax of the estranged spouse are common and are often denied and now,...

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