RTI success stories officially compiled for the first time

The Central Information Commission (CIC), which had given the task of compiling success stories of Right to Information (RTI) from across the States, to Pune’s Yashwantrao Chavan Academy for Development and Administration (YASHDA), has come out with a glossy, 120-page coffee table book. This contains over 50 RTI success stories of citizens and several transparency initiatives by public authorities.   YASHADA reached out to Administrative Training Institutes of all States, seeking...

RTI Empowerment: Patients Are Scarce at Pt Bhimsen Joshi Hospital in Mira Bhaindar, finds activist Krishna Gupta 

Probably for the first time, a Right to Information (RTI) activist has used the Section 2(j) of the RTI Act to conduct a physical inspection of a public premise. The premises in question was that of the 100-bed Pandit Bhimsen Joshi (Temba) Hospital, a new facility run by the Mira Bhaindar Municipal Corp (MBMC). The Corporation was reluctant to even start this Hospital citing lack of funding. Finally, the Hospital was started in January 2016, following an order from the Bombay High Court,...

Gurugram’s Kingdom of Dreams gets a RTI nightmare

Kingdom of Dreams (KoD) is an expansive tourist destination with an extravagant entertainment area in Sector 29, which is a snobby, stiff upper lip locality of Gurugram in Haryana. It is run by a private company that goes by the name of Great India Nautanki Co Ltd. This company was given about six acres of prime land on a 15-year lease in 2008 at a rent of Rs.36 lakh per year by the Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA). Under the agreement with HUDA, the company has committed to...

“Good Governance Can Be Provided by Public Servants Only If They Follow ‘Raj Dharma’,” says Justice Santosh Hedge

“Governance cannot be all process and values. It must ensure that the citizens, especially the poorest, have the basic needs and have a life with dignity. A dictatorship that delivers basic needs to the citizens is no doubt better than a dictatorship that does not, but it is not good governance.  Similarly, regular elections alone do not translate into 'good governance'. Rule of law that is transparent, but unjust is certainly not 'good governance'. It is only when all these three...

Ashok Khemka Wants To Have Open Day for File Inspections under Section 4, in Haryana, Like in Pune

Every Monday, the Pune Municipal Corp (PMC) allows citizens to inspect files from any department between 3pm to 5pm. They can visit any department, access files and also get photo copies of the documents under section 4 of the Right to Information (RTI) Act.   Highly impressed by this initiative, IAS officer Ashok Khemka, who at present is principal secretary in Haryana, wants to have open days for citizens for inspecting files in that state too.    Speaking at the annual...

Unprecedented traffic 'downs' MoCA website on eve of India's air rescue ops

Unprecedented internet traffic on the eve of one of the largest air rescue operations in the world brought 'down' the Union Ministry of Civil Aviation's website on Wednesday.   Accordingly, the ministry said that NIC is working on to fix the glitch caused. "Details regarding evacuation flights will be put up on the Air India website soon. Kindly check there directly. Our apologies for the inconvenience caused," the ministry tweeted   India will commence one of the world's...