Archive for November, 2009

RTI: Getting personal information is allowed

In a recent court order, the Madras High Court has interpreted the usage of RTI to allow obtaining personal information of current Government officials or pensioners for some specific reasons. It is a public perception about RTI that the usage of RTI is only meant for obtaining information, either about the process of movement of information in the Government, or about actions taken by units of the Government. So, RTI has typically been used to obtain details about spendings (with recent high profile cases being about trying to determine the expenses of ministers on re-doing their offices or official houses, or even of the cost of holding a Cabinet meeting, as was done in Karnataka).
This case is a more difficult case that was refused by the RTI Commission against an application, where there was a court order against a former employee of the Government, but the court order could not be executed since the person could not be found. At the same time, there was another arm of the Government that was actually aware of the address, since the person was receiving pension from the Government, and the pension was being paid out of a post office. So, if you were to take the right perspective, the court order execution should have been possible by getting the address from the post office; but it is impossible to believe that the Government would be so proactive. So, it is the interested person who had to use the RTI form for the required purpose (link to article):

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Anti Maoist operations – UAVs to be used to gather information

The Government, for the past several years, has been stating that the Maoist problem is a severe problem, and the ‘Red’ corridor that the naxalites have set up in the central section of the country means that there are large areas of the country where Government officials do not set foot. However, at the same time, since law and order was a state subject, and also because we did not have a really effective Home Minister (Shivraj Patil), there was not much Government effort in this regard. It is only recently that the Government has shown determination to act in this regard – however, this could also be because the action by the Naxals has become more direct, and they have started attacking economic assets of the state and of private companies at a much higher frequencies. Worrying for the state and central Governments, they are also showing strategy in attacking the security forces, and getting local populations to take part in their training.

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The emerging distance between Mulayam and Kalyan Singh

Kalyan Singh seems like the total outsider. At one time, he was the lord and master of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, and the Chief Minister of India’s most populous state. Now, to some extent, he is sharing the fate of the BJP, only difference being that he is in a worse off position. He does not appear to have any friends, does not have any political influence, and the only party that seemed to be ready to team up with him, the Samajwadi Party, seems to be backing down due to the perceived political liability (link to article):

In an apparent sign of Samajwadi Party’s disenchantment with Kalyan Singh after its crushing defeat in the recent bypolls in Uttar Pradesh, party supreme Mulayam Singh Yadav on Saturday said that the former chief minister never was nor would ever be inducted into the SP.
“I have said this in the past and would repeat it again that Kalyan Singh was never in the SP, nor he will be taken in the party fold in the future,” Yadav told reporters here in a reply to a question.

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