The Wire: New Delhi: Thursday, March
16, 2017.
When it comes
to transparency, it seems the Narendra Modi government is moving in reverse.
The Department of Personnel and Training, the nodal agency responsible for
effectively implementing the Right to Information (RTI) Act, has refused to
share details on the appointment of information commissioners, claiming that
the body is exempted from doing so.
The response
of the chief public information officer (CPIO) of the department and the first
appellate authority, which upheld the decision, has not gone down well with the
applicant and RTI activist, Commodore (Retd.) Lokesh Batra. He has claimed
that, in denying the information, the “DoPT has decided to go in reverse gear
by overturning its own previous order and ignoring the CIC order.”
Batra pointed
out that in the first ten years of RTI, the central government had “no issue in
transparently sharing information with citizens, regarding selection of
Chief/Information Commissioners in Central Information Commission.” And that
its stance had changed somewhat in the last year and a half.
In December
2015, Batra said, the CPIO of the DoPT had suddenly presumed the papers
relating to the selection of commissioners in the CIC to be “cabinet papers”.
However, in 2016, the first appellate authority of the DoPT had rejected the
CPIO’s contention and observed that “the basic information sought by the
applicant, cannot be equated with Cabinet papers and should have been provided
by the CPIO to the applicant.”
The authority
had also directed the CPIO to revisit the application and provide the applicant
with point-wise information within 15 working days of the order being issued.
Because the
two IC appointments had not been announced even several months after the posts
were advertised in September 2016, Batra filed an application in January this
year to find out what was happening. With the pendency of cases in the CIC
nearing the 30,000 mark, he demanded to know the names of those who had applied
for the posts as well as the criteria adopted for processing, shortlisting and
screening names (before they were forwarded to the selection committee). He had
also asked about the screening committee’s composition.
To his
surprise, this time too CPIO Preeti Khanna only provided one part of the
information and stated that 225 applications had been received for the posts of
ICs. This despite the FAA having earlier noted that such information should be
provided. However, this time the CPIO declined information on all the other
aspects claiming exemption under Section 8(1)(i) & (j) of the RTI Act,
2005. Further section 12(3) of the RTI Act lays down the procedure to appoint
ICs.
Batra finally
appealed to the first appellate authority on February 9. He insisted that
Section 8(1)(i) states with respect to “cabinet papers including records of
deliberations of the Council of Ministers, Secretaries and other officers” that
“the decisions of Council of Ministers, the reasons thereof, and the material
on the basis of which the decisions were taken shall be made public after the
decision has been taken, and the matter is complete, or over: Provided further
that those matters which come under the exemptions specified in this section
shall not be disclosed.”
He also noted
that Section 8(1)(j) covers “information which relates to personal information
the disclosure of which has no relationship to any public activity or interest,
or which would cause unwarranted invasion of the privacy of the individual
unless the Central Public Information Officer or the State Public Information
Officer or the appellate authority, as the case may be, is satisfied that the
larger public interest justifies the disclosure of such information: Provided that
the information, which cannot be denied to the Parliament or a State
Legislature shall not be denied to any person.”
Therefore, he
contended that the exemption clause would not apply to his appeal. “… I quoted
and attached my appeal and FAA’s Order in my 2015 case mentioned at Paras 8
above since information requested was basic and same like past. On March 3,
2017, I also forwarded a copy of CIC Order quoted in my appeal.”
However,
Batra said the authority had remained silent in its March 8 order on his
arguments in the appeal. These included the ones pertaining to the previous
FAA’s order and the CIC order of December 21, 2012.
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