Times of India: Pune: Monday, June 04, 2018.
RTI activists
have welcomed the central government’s move to shelve the new rules for
streamlining the filing of RTI applications, appeals and functioning of the
information commissions. The rules were being criticized with various activists
having written to the centre to withdraw them.
The
department of personnel and training (DoPT) has in a recent communication asked
the CIC if there was a need for fresh rules. According to an activist DoPT had
sought CIC's opinion on how the rules would help for better functioning.
However, the draft rules were criticised by CIC during their internal
discussions and had sent objections to DoPT last December.
According to
activists who wrote to the CIC, they expressed that the Act was functioning
fine without the fresh set of rules. "There are lot of flaws in the new
rules and these need not be incorporated,'' stated a release by a group of
activists.
Meanwhile the
Information Commissioners had raised the issue of Rule 15 that had given more
powers to CICs to assign any RTI appeal to a commissioner in larger public
interest. CIC had pointed out that this would mean unnecessary government
interventions.
Activists who
were relieved that there are no change of rules stated that probably the
government does not want to get any negative publicity ahead of the general
elections in the coming year. The rules were put in public domain by DoPT in
April 2017. The new rules were introduced after RTI rules were notified in
2012. The most controversial clause in the RTI rules has been an appeal that
would abate the death of an RTI applicant which had caused a furore as
activists felt that this would mean an increase in attacks on RTI applicants.
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