Indian
Express: New Delhi: Saturday, October 25,
2014.
The Central Information Commission has been
headless since August 22 and in the interim, the Right to Information is being eroded. A month ago,
the Madras High Court invited widespread criticism by ruling that an RTI
applicant must state reasons for seeking information, and that she must serve
the public interest. Now, the office of the governor of Maharashtra has issued
a government resolution empowering officers to ignore requests that do not
serve any public interest. The Madras High Court had moved suo motu to review
its own order, clarifying that it violated Section 6(2) of the RTI Act, which states
that an application does not have to disclose reasons. However, the resolution
in Maharashtra remains to be reversed.
These moves appear to stem from impatience about
frivolous and motivated requests. As the Madras High Court had explained, the
legislatures had not intended that information was to be handed out “like
pamphlets to any person, unmindful of the object”. In Mumbai, the Raj Bhavan is
particularly disinterested in providing personal information that may compromise
privacy, especially in matters which may serve a private interest. However, the
authorities cannot ascribe motive or lack of it which is frivolity by another
name to applicants with any degree of certainty until the information released
is put to use. Or not used, as the case may be. Besides, to declare the motive
of an RTI query in advance is self-defeating, alerting the very authorities
that it may be designed to catch out. The mechanism came with automatism built
in precisely to negate governmental discretion.
The prevention of misuse should not be the first
concern in the working of a law. Efficiency in use should routinely trump that
argument, specially in laws that effect fundamental changes in human behaviour
and public practices. A parallel may be drawn with the anti-dowry law, which is
turning the tide on a mainstream but ugly custom. Its provisions are perceived
to have been widely misused, but the Supreme Court has nevertheless upheld
Section 498A of the IPC, which criminalises cruelty to women, while warning that it
should not be used to settle scores. This year, Lalitha Kumaramangalam, the new
chairperson of the National Commission of Women, admitted that the law is
misused, but rejected this as a ground for dilution. The parallel with the RTI
controversy is remarkable and by the same logic, the law that exposed the
Adarsh scam, and so many others, must not be diluted.
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