The Hindu: Chennai: Tuesday, June
28, 2016.
The chapter
was removed during a restructuring of school syllabus in the State.
Former Chief
Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah has written to the Chief Minister
Vasundhara Raje expressing displeasure at the removal of a chapter on the Right
to Information (RTI) Act from school text books in Rajasthan.
In a letter
dated June 24, Mr. Habibullah, currently the Chairperson of Commonwealth Human
Rights Initiative (CHRI), has cited section 26 of the RTI Act, to point out
that the law places a statutory duty on State governments to educate the
citizenry, particularly the disadvantaged segments of society, about their
right to seek and receive information from public authorities.
The chapter
on the law that was passed in 2005 to improve transparency in government was
removed as part of the Rajasthan government’s revised school syllabus for the
year 2016. The syllabus has also removed a page highlighting the Right to
Information (RTI) Act. According to reports, a prominent section on page 105,
which was part of chapter 12 of the previous Social Science textbook for Class
VIII in State schools, has now been removed in the “restructured” book.
In the
letter, Mr. Habibullah, the first CIC of India, has referred to Rajasthan as
the 'karmabhoomi' of the RTI Act and reminded the Chief Minister of how the
government she was a part of in 2002 was instrumental in bringing the first
national-level RTI law in 2002, in which Ms. Raje was a Minister of State in
the Department of Personnel and Training, the nodal Central government agency
implementing the law.
He has urged
the State government to rightfully take pride in the fact that it is a role
model in this area and requested that the Education department to restore the
chapter.
The RTI Act
was passed as the result of a nationwide movement for transparency and
accountability in governance, led, among others, by Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey of
the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS). Ms. Roy, along with other members of
the organisation they lead, also wrote to Ms. Raje demanding that such changes
not be made.
Speaking to
The Hindu Mr. Dey said that during a recent Jawabdehi (accountability in
governance) mobilisation they had raised questions with the Rajasthan education
department as to why chapters on RTI law were removed from school books to
which bureaucrats responded that the changes had been submitted to a review
committee of the SCERT (State Council of Educational Research and Training).
However, no progress had been made on the review till now, he said.
“It's not
just about the removal of information on RTI Act from school books but also
about the vast sums of public money being wasted in the process of withdrawing
earlier published books from the market and printing new ones without
explaining the tearing hurry to accomplish this," he said.
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