Scroll.in: National: Saturday,
January 28, 2017.
As an
information commissioner who dealt with over 20,000 cases under the Right to
Information Act, I had the opportunity of interacting with a large number of
information seekers and public information officers. The latter generally refer
to people who regularly file right to information applications as blackmailers
and harassers, and accuse them of misusing the law. I would broadly divide
those who file a large number of applications in the following categories:
1.
Those who file applications with the hope of exposing
corruption or arbitrariness and to improve and correct governance.
2.
Those who do so to correct a wrong that they perceive has
been done to them. Their basic intention is to get justice for themselves.
3.
Those who use the Act to blackmail people. This category largely
targets illegal buildings, mining, or some other activity that runs foul of the
law.
4.
Those who use it to harass public officials to get undue
favours.
All these
categories together comprise around 15% of the total appeals and complaints
before the Central Information Commission. Nobody will deny that the first
category certainly deserves to be encouraged. In the second category, there are
some who have been able to get corrective action and some whose grievances may
defy resolution. When faced with such applicants, public information officers
should speak to the concerned officer to evaluate whether the grievance can be
redressed.
Most of us
have a strong aversion to the third and fourth categories of applicants, who
use the Act to make money or to put pressure on certain people to get an undue
favour. These two categories certainly do not exceed 15% of the total appeals
and complaints with the commission. They represent persistent
right-to-information users who are generally knowledgeable about appeals and
procedures. Thus, they are not the true representative sample of all
applicants.
A detailed
study by the RTI Assessment and Analysis Group, or RaaG, and a small study done
by me show that such applications are actually less than 5% of the total
number. Most applicants are unaware of appeal procedures, or do not have the
time and inclination to pursue appeals. Hence, the percentage of those who file
second appeals is far more for the last two categories.
Misuse of
law
I would argue
that in the implementation of most laws, some people would misuse their
provisions. The police often misuse their powers to subvert the law, just as
criminals misuse our judicial system to prolong trials. The misuse of any law
is largely dependent on the kind of people in a society and whether the justice
system has the capability of punishing wrongdoers. There are people who go to
places of worship with the sole objective of committing theft or other crimes.
But society does not define this as the main characteristic of temples. Is it
reasonable to then expect only angels to use the right to information law?
To be able to
blackmail an officer or someone who has indulged in an illegal activity, there
are some illegal actions. Noticing and curbing these is the job of various
government officers and the citizen is actually acting as a vigilance monitor.
I have often questioned government officers on how blackmailers operate. They
state that the right-to-information blackmailer threatens an illegal action
with exposure and extorts money. I have sometimes wondered why society has such
touching empathy for victims who have committed illegal acts. The fourth
category must be discouraged and information commissioners do this fairly
easily.
Freedom of
speech and media which like the right to information are covered under Article
19 (1) (a) of the Constitution have been expanding with time. The reasonable
restraints on it are defined by Article 19 (2) and covered by exemptions in the
Right to Information Act. There is a national debate when a movie is subjected
to cuts or people or the media are muzzled by the government, political class
or ruffians. On the other hand, there is a constant refrain from those who have
power including information commissioners to highlight the misuse of the Right
to Information Act. This is an attempt to muzzle the citizen’s fundamental
right. The Supreme Court, in one judgement, castigated right-to-information
users with these words:
“The Act
should not be allowed to be misused or abused, to become a tool to obstruct the
national development and integration, or to destroy the peace, tranquility and
harmony among its citizens. Nor should it be converted into a tool of
oppression or intimidation of honest officials striving to do their duty.”
Weakening
tactic
There is no
evidence of right to information being harmful to national interest. There is
an increasing danger of the Act being amended by gross misinterpretation. While
the Indian law is among the best five in terms of its provisions, we rank
number 66 on performance.
Many eminent
persons in the country berate the right to information, saying there should be
limits to it. It is accepted widely that freedom of speech is often used to
abuse or defame people, or used by small newspapers to resort to blackmail. The
concept of paid news is well recorded. Despite all this, there is never a
demand to constrict freedom of speech. But there is a growing tendency among
those with power to misinterpret and castigate the Right to Information Act,
almost to the point where it does not really represent what the law says. There
is widespread acceptance of the idea that statements, books and works of
literature and art are covered by Article 19 (1) (a), and any attempt to curb
it meets with stiff resistance. However, there is no murmur when right to
information users are labelled deprecatingly, although this right, too, is covered by the same article
of the Constitution. Everyone with power appears to say: “I would risk my life
for your right to express your views, but damn you if you use RTI in a manner I
do not approve.”
The constant
attacks on the right to information are leading to an impression that it needs
to be curbed and its activists deprecated, attacked or murdered. We should not
allow this fundamental right to be weakened.
(Shailesh
Gandhi is a former central information commissioner)