Right to Information - Indian law and SA experience

Sidharth Narrain has written a very good article on the legal position under the new Right to Information Act. Probably one of the first uses of the new legislation should be to ask for the disclosure of the reports of the innumerable Commissions of Inquiries set up by various state and central governments, whose reports were never made public for political reasons. That option now seems to be foreclosed because the new law overrides all previous laws, therefore including the Commissions of Inquiry Act, which gave the government the power to refuse disclosure. The story on the use of the right to information in South Africa, which is the only country to grant it as a constitutional right, is also interesting. The crucial difference in South Africa is that the right is available against private companies as well.