The Telegraph: Saturday, May 26, 2018.
The National Campaign for Peoples' Right to Information on Friday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to put the proposed amendments to the RTI Act in the public domain in keeping with the government's policy of pre-legislative consultations.
The policy, adopted in 2014, mandates that all draft legislation (including subordinate legislation) should be placed in the public domain for 30 days and comments invited from the public.
It also requires a summary of the comments to be made available on the website of the ministry concerned before the bill is sent to the cabinet for approval. Citing media reports, the activists said the proposed amendment bill sought to weaken the RTI Act by empowering the Centre and the state governments to decide the salaries of the information commissioners.
Currently, the RTI Act pegs the salaries, allowances and terms of service of the chiefs of the information commissions and the information commissioners of the Central Information Commission at the level of those of Supreme Court judges.
The salaries, allowances and terms of service of the state information commissioners are pegged at the level of those of the state chief secretaries. "Empowering the central and state governments to decide the salaries of the information commissioners would seriously undermine the independence of the information commissions," an RTI activist said.
The RTI activists have also urged Modi to explain the reason for the amendments to facilitate a proper discussion before they are introduced in Parliament.
"This manner of legislating important laws undermines people's democratic right to know and participate in the legislative process and prevents public scrutiny of the provisions of a proposed bill," they have written in their letter. They have highlighted that more than six million RTI applications are filed annually.
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