IAS babus trained not to provide RTI information: Subhash Chandra Agarwal

The Times of India: Goa: Monday, October 29, 2012.

Right to Information (RTI) Act crusader Subhash Chandra Agarwal, who has been credited with asking over 6,000 queries to date, said that Indian bureaucrats are actually trained in service to respond to RTI queries without revealing the necessary information in the reply.

"Indian Administrative Services actually trains its officers to reply to a RTI query without really replying to it. The first chief information commissioner of India, Wajahat Habibullah, told me this during an interaction with him. It is Habibullah who advised me not to ask 'why' in a RTI query as it is not covered under the Act's purview, but to ask for the action taken report against an erring officer instead and this will provide the necessary answers," Agarwal said, speaking at the two-day seminar 'RTI: A potent weapon against corruption' at International Centre-Goa, Dona Paula, on Sunday.

Agarwal, who holds a Guinness World Record for writing the most 'letters to the editor' in newspapers, said that the portals pgportal.gov.in and helpline.rb.nic.in allow citizens to directly submit RTI queries to the presidential office, but is rarely used by citizens.

"The portals have a capacity of 150 submissions per day, but for a nation with over a billion population only 40 queries are sent each day," he said.

Agarwal said that the country spends 23 of the exchequer's money to recover 10 of the stamp pasted on every RTI query. He suggested that the government should come out with special stamps for RTI instead as the present system of recovery of the 10 stamp amount on RTI queries is totally illogical.

"Also, information commissions should be made a party in cases where the RTI verdict is challenged against the RTI applicant in courts. It is unfair for the RTI applicant to fight a lone battle in courts. The courts should have an assigned day to deal with RTI queries like the first Monday of a month etc to avoid adjournments of RTI cases as the whole purpose of the Act is to provide information readily," Agarwal said.

Stating that bodies directly or indirectly funded or controlled by government should continue to be covered under RTI, he said, "Most unholy alliances take place in public, private partnerships."