Moneylife: New Delhi: Friday, March 17, 2017.
The
Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT), the nodal agency for implementation
of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, has chosen to be secretive regarding
information on the selection process of information commissioners (IC), even
though activists had successfully fought to make the selection process of chief
information commissioners and information commissioners transparent. In fact,
DoPT itself had earlier given information under RTI, regarding the number and
names of applicants for these crucial posts, and any other information
pertaining to this issue. Also, an order from the Central Information
Commission (CIC) of 2012 supports transparency in this regard.
The trigger
for denying information pertained to appointments for two information
commissioners, posts which were advertised in September 2016 but to date no
appointments have been made, despite the fact that Information commissioners MA
Khan Yusfi and Basant Seth have completed their tenures in December 2016 and
March 2017, respectively. Considering that these two vacancies have added to
second appeal pendency, which numbers 30,000 now, activist Commodore (retd)
Lokesh Batra filed an RTI application in January 2017, and subsequently a first
appeal in March 2017. But these were stonewalled.
Last week,
the DoPT has denied information on Batra’s RTI query on the list, with names of
applicants who have applied for ICs posts, names of Screening Committee members
and inspection of files of the same. It has only replied to his query on the
total number of applications received in DoPT for ICs posts in CIC. It stated
that 225 applications were received by the DoPT for the post of the two
information commissioners.
Both the
Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) and the First Appellate Authority
(FAA) of the DoPT have irrelevantly clung to two sub-sections of Section 8 of
the RTI Act, to deny information. The exemptions are:
Section 8(1)
(i): “Cabinet papers, including records of deliberations of the Council of
Ministers, Secretaries and other officers: Provided 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” and Section 8 (1) (j): “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.
Interestingly,
a CIC decision on 21 December 2012 has ordered that since files relating to
appointment of information commissioners “are most demanded by citizens, the
department can decide to upload all files in their website since, in our
opinion, there could be very little in these files which could come under any
of the exemption provisions.”
It further
stated “We direct the CPIO to obtain the orders of the competent authority
within the department and carry out the uploading within a month of receiving
this order. This option would be far more economical than employing larger
number of personnel to assist the CPIO”.
In fact, the
Delhi High Court, in its order of 9 April 2015, has also reprimanded the delay
in the appointment of information commissioners. The HC stated, “…having regard
to the undisputed fact that the non-appointment of the Chief Information
Commissioner has virtually frustrated the very purpose of the Right to
Information Act, 2005, we are of the view that it is necessary for this court
to monitor the steps that are being taken for filling up the vacancies in
question so as to ensure that all the vacancies are filled up within a
timeframe.”
Regarding
DoPT somersaulting on the CIC decision and its own record of showing
transparency in this issue, Commodore (retd) Batra rues, “…none of the
information requested falls in the exemption clauses, which was accepted by
previous FAA and also CIC order of 21 December 2012. The DoPT is now making a
mockery of the transparency law. Are authorities responsible for implementing
transparency regime moving in reverse gear?”
Former
Central Information Commissioner and RTI activist, Shailesh Gandhi, says, “This
is a very unfortunate development, which suggests that there is a regression in
the approach to RTI. We will all need to find a way to stop this.”
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