Rahul Gandhi voiced his disagreement with the selection of Raj Kumar Goyal as Chief Information Commissioner, proposing alternative candidates with extensive experience in public policy and law.
The Central Information Commission (CIC) attains its full strength after nine years with the appointment of Raj Kumar Goyal as chief and eight other information commissioners.
A panel headed by PM Modi and including Rahul Gandhi will meet to decide on the next Chief Information Commissioner and information commissioners for vacant positions at the Central Information Commission (CIC).
'The protection of secrecy and anonymity gets lost with this linking.'
'I am only asking about his travel bills and expenditure.'
The RTI also sought the details of the fees paid by the SBI to senior advocate Harish Salve to defend its case against the disclosure of the electoral bonds' records, citing that the records are held in a fiduciary capacity and the information is personal in nature.
The IAF plea has claimed that the 'information so sought includes details related to the entire entourage, names of Special Protection Group personnel accompanying the Prime Minister of India on foreign tours for his personal safety, and the same, if disclosed, can potentially affect the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security, strategic, scientific or economic interests of the State'.
Despite the objections raised by Reserve Bank of India and Election Commission, India's politics has been funded anonymously and it is time to end this, asserts Aakar Patel.
'My interest is to open up transparency to the people who unnecessary raise these issues. The prime minister has full right to go wherever he is going but the question is why is he not transparent on expenditure.' 'When the prime minister went to the UN, he spoke of transparency. You are not complying with it. It shows hypocrisy.' Commodore Lokesh Batra (retd) on why he filed an RTI to find out how much Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spent on his foreign visits.
In an apparent violation of the Right to Information Act, the Public Information Officer at the Prime Minister's Office has refused to provide information to an applicant, saying he failed to show how it was "useful" to him "either personally, socially or nationally".
Chief Information Commissioner R K Mathur rejected the contention of the ministry that details of the amount, reference numbers, dates of bills raised by Indian Air Force and Air India for the foreign visits undertaken by the Prime Minister are scattered across various records and files and collation of information in the manner sought by the appellant would involve searching of voluminous records by a significant number of officials.
A Right to Information activist Arun Sawant was critically injured after being shot by two unidentified men in Thane.
Air India had stopped the practice of issuing tickets on credit to government agencies for the travel of their officials in December last year because of accruing pending bills.
'Maybe the State wants to be watching people all the time. But when they are watching, others too may be watching!' 'The State is becoming more and more secretive while throwing people to the wolves.'
The data gathered by activist Commodore (Retd) Lokesh Batra through his RTI application, show that till June 2016, Indian Air Force aircraft were used for the prime minister's visits to 11 countries -- Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Qatar, Australia, Pakistan, Russia, Iran, Fiji and Singapore.
Leader of Congress in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge has reportedly been inducted into the three-member selection committee which will select the chief information commissioner.
The new rules have given discretion to government to decide on allowances or service conditions not specifically covered by the 2019 rules which would be 'binding'.
The proposed rules, aimed at replacing RTI rules of 2012, have been placed by the department of personnel and training on its website for comments from public.
A five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi upheld the 2010 Delhi high court verdict and dismissed three appeals filed by Secretary General of the Supreme Court and the Central Public Information officer of the apex court.
