ONE month is all a government department gets to furnish information under the right to information (RTI) Act. Instead, the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) has allegedly used that period to persuade an applicant to withdraw his petition. On March 19 this year, S Samayan of T Kallupatti natural resource protection committee filed an RTI application seeking information on stone crushers in Kilankulam, Vannivelanpatti and Ammapatti panchayats at T Kallupatti in Madurai.

When Bijaya Chandra Panda wanted to cut down a few trees on his 8 hectare (ha) plot he thought he was well within his rights to do so. Little did he realize that it would take him 300

The State Government's role vis-

The controversial Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor project has now been challenged under the Right to Information Act(RTI). UndertheRTIAct2004,the home ministry has been questioned which are the agencies and departments and officials responsible for clearing the project. It has also been asked what is the basis on which the project has been termed a public welfare activity while thousand of commuters have been facing difficulties due to this project in the Capital.

The department of personnel and training (DoPT) proposes to ask the international firm PricewaterhouseCoopers to assess the efficacy of the Right to Information (RTI) Act of 2005. The RTI Act has been hard won with activists raising awareness about the issue since the 1990s. They have now criticised the government for hiring a foreign company for the evaluation and are certain that the exercise is meant to ease the discomfort that the law has generated for a secrecy-loving bureaucracy. (Editorial) May 3-9, 2008

More than two years after the Right to Information Act came into force, Assam continues to witness a markedly limited use of its provisions, which could be linked to its poor promotion by the State Government. In a large number of government offices and institutions receiving Government funds, there are no functionaries who have been properly trained to handle RTI applications. Other offices are handicapped by lack of supporting infrastructure. This has created a discouraging situation for the applicant, and a restraint in the flow of authentic and updated information.

The Union home ministry has suggested that the data obtained in the coming Census 2011 needs to be kept out of the ambit of the Right to Information Act. The Registrar-General of India (RGI), the body under the home ministry entrusted with the task of generating data on population statistics, has said that the "confidentiality" guar anteed to the informants by the Census Act in respect of census information has been "partly eroded" after the enactment of the RTI Act of 2005. "This position will need to be restored in the interest of quality of census data," it has said.

In addition to knowing about and treating their poison-ravaged bodies, the people in Bhopal need research to know what lies in store for the children born to gas-affected and contamination-affected parents. Right to knowledge: A Bhopal gas tragedy survivor sitting in protest in New Delhi.

February 2006: Divya Raghunandan of Greenpeace files RTI application with Department of Biotechnology (DBT), seeking data on gm plants

March 2006: DBT gives information on trial sites; says rest of the data is confidential and proprietary and cannot be shared

April 2006: Raghunandan goes to DBT's Appellate Authority for help

The Maharashtra government has given away about 40 hectare (ha) of grazing land to Dow Chemicals for a research and development facility in Shendi village, 30 km from Pune.

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