NoBody even CJ cant be excluded from People Rights : SOMNATH

Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee on Tuesday (April 22) disagreed with Chief Justice of India -- K G Balakrishnan's views that the Right the Information Act was not applicable to his office.

"I am not questioning the Chief Justice. He is a high constitutional functionary. But since you ask me, I feel we should not keep anything back from people," he told reporters when asked about the CJI's views.

Chatterjee said in a democracy people occupy the central position and insisted that once such information is denied then "there is scope for speculation which may affect the credibility of the institution".

Disputing Balakrishnan's views that Constitutional functionaries are not covered under the RTI, he said "everything is under the Constitution or should be under the Constitution. The question is whether people are entitled to know."

"The Constitutional position of people's right to know has been recognised under the RTI Act," he said noting that it has been brought for the purpose of enforcement. The refrain of the Speaker, who has been forthright in airing his views on judicial activism, was that "we should not keep anything back from people" as they have the right to know in a democracy

Security Scare on PM's Flight

A plane carrying Prime Minister Manmohan Singh got a security scare on Tuesday evening when an unidentified object was spotted flying close to it.

Singh was returning from Jamshedpur when Delhi’s air traffic control (ATC) picked up an unidentified blip on its radar. The blip could have been an unidentified aircraft.

The Prime Minister’s aircraft was aligned to the instrument landing system—a system which aids planes to land—of the runway at the Delhi International aircraft when ATC picked up the blip.

Fearing for security, the plane was disengaged from the instrument landing system to take evasive action from the unidentified object. Sources at the Delhi ATC though say that the blip could have been a radar malfunction.

The plane was delayed by 16 minutes.

This was the second security scare for the PM’s aircraft since December 2007. The pilot and co-pilot of a private airline's helicopter were arrested on December 17 when they landed at a helipad in Bilaspur, Himachal Pradesh, minutes before Singh was about to take off.