MADURAI
The Right to Information Act, which came into force in 2005, had brought in sort of a social revolution by considerably improving transparency in governance, said M. Sheela Priya, State Chief Information Commissioner, here on Tuesday.
Addressing the 26th convocation of Mother Teresa Women’s University (MTWU), organised at Madurai Kamaraj University here, she said that by making access to information a right the Act had transformed the perception of how government shared information with people. “Now, the information dictated by the Act alone can be withheld by the government and rest all had to be shared with the people,” she said. “Dynamics set in motion by this Act has added a lot of strength to the democratic quality embedded in our Constitution,” she added.
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The Governor, Banwarilal Purohit, presided over the convocation.
Highlighting that the gross enrolment ratio (GER) in Tamil Nadu, particularly among women, was the highest in the country, K. P. Anbalagan, Minister for Higher Education, said that the present government had consistently been taking efforts for women empowerment.
Presenting the annual report of the university, G. Valli, Vice-Chancellor, said that a lot of initiatives to develop the infrastructure were being undertaken with the ₹ 20 crore fund received through Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan.
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A total of 11,014 graduates, post-graduates, M. Phil. and Ph. D. scholars received their degrees, 10,723 of them in-absentia, university officials said.