Seema Chishti: Thu Sep 30 2010: New Delhi:
On his last day in office as the first chairperson of the Central Information Commission, Wajahat Habibullah was still busy writing, dictating, correcting and confabulating. Among his last meetings were with three appellants who were keen that he dispose of their complaints before demitting office.
The man credited with putting the historic Right to Information Act, enacted in 2005, into place, says he grew in the job. “I was aware of the failings of government,” says the former bureaucrat, “but I learnt to view government from the outside, as to how those outside government see it — that’s what this job showed me most of all.”
On the impact of RTI, Habibullah says: “The courts are now looking at how RTI relates to them. There were attempts by several wings of government to seek immunity from RTI, but institutions like the Army are very au fait with the RTI, having developed mechanisms to cope with it. As far as courts go, there are specific issues like how it relates to the CJI’s office.”
Habibullah’s stint was praised for how he dealt with overenthusiastic RTI users while ensuring that government work wasn’t held up by demands of transparency. While he firmly weighed in on the side of RTI activists by resisting attempts to amend the law, he was also criticised for being soft on PIOs and not levying enough penalties.
Among the seven cases he drafted and dictated on his last day was a decision regarding a complaint against the Calcutta HC, which had argued that as it was established by the “crown”, it did not come under the Centre’s jurisdiction. Habibullah dictated to his staff the basics of how “the Government of India is the successor government to the Queen, and we don’t cede sovereignty to her or any higher power”.
It’s a far cry from the days when, he recounts, officers like him were trained to withhold as much information as possible. On his handwriting, he says, “My signature is so bad and my handwriting is even worse. We were trained to sign in a way that would be impossible to forge, and to write in a way that was unintelligible without our being there, so we could fudge our way out of file notings... all trained to defeat any freedom of information.”
While he had resigned as CIC a few months ago to try and set up the State Information Commission in Srinagar — a project that never took off — he was held back by the government that said a successor could not be found. A J&K cadre officer, he has a lot of emotional energy invested in the affairs there.
Habibullah’s father Maj Gen E Habibullah is credited with setting up the Military Academy at Khadakvasla. A 1956 picture of his father with Pandit Nehru on horseback was one of the few things in his room that went back home with him after work on Wednesday.
A N Tiwari is new CIC
Information Commissioner A N Tiwari is all set to succeed Wajahat Habibullah as the new CIC. His tenure will be all of two and a half months, till he retires. A full-term CIC will be picked only in December. Habibullah confirmed this to The Indian Express.
Tiwari is credited with significant decisions like asking banks and financial institutions to be more transparent in dealing with RTI requests and making IT returns of political parties public. ens
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