Deccan Herald: Panaji: Thursday, July 13, 2017.
Hearing an
appeal against a Bombay High Court order that declared the governor’s office a
public authority and directed the Goa Raj Bhavan to make public the governor’s
report to the President on the political situation in the state in July-August
2007 under the Right To Information (RTI) Act, a bench of the Supreme Court has
posed an interesting question. Why should constitutional offices be kept out of
the purview of the RTI? A bench comprising Justices Arun Mishra and Amitava Roy
was of the view that even functioning of the Chief Justice of India (CJI) was
not something that required secrecy. This is a welcome change from the earlier
view of the apex court when it did not agree with the conclusion reached by the
Central Information Commission and several high courts that the CJI’s office
was under legal obligation to disclose all facts and correspondence demanded by
anybody through an RTI application and fell under the RTI Act.
The Right To
Information Act, passed in 2005, is one of the most powerful tools in the hands
of the public. Not only does it help keep corruption in check, it also provides
those within the civil society with a way to hold the various organs of the
state accountable. The interest of transparency will certainly be better served
if all constitutional functionaries, including the Chief Justice of India
(CJI), were to come under the purview of Right to Information (RTI). Given how
the court has struck down the National Judicial Appointments Commission Bill
that would have replaced the current opaque collegium system of judicial
appointments, bringing the CJI’s office under RTI would be the right way toward
course correction.
This is
overdue since the previous UPA government made subtle efforts to weaken the
right to information movement and the present NDA government is following the
same track. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repeatedly boasted about
transparency in his government. However, a plea filed under RTI has revealed
that since assuming office, the Modi government has reduced funds for promoting
use of the transparency law. Recently, it has put in the public domain a set of
new rules for RTI applications which could result in its dilution. Two of them
pertain to withdrawal of an RTI application at any stage and the abatement of
appeals in case of the death of the applicant. These could result in
intimidation, activists fear. The Supreme Court and the high courts have been
the fountainhead of the right to information movement. The Supreme Court
bench’s latest observations fortify the case for expanding and not limiting the
scope of the RTI legislation.
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