Deccan
Herald: Bengaluru: Monday, 16 February 2015.
The State
government is contemplating some drastic changes in the RTI rules, which
include keeping the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) out of the ambit of
the RTI and imposing postal charges on the applicants.
On September
22 last year, a meeting held under the chairmanship of the Additional Chief
Secretary of the Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms V Umesh had
suggested some major changes. Now, the State government is learnt to have moved
ahead to implement the decision.
The key
intention of the meeting was to make the Right to Information (RTI) Act
popular. But among other things, four important issues were discussed, which
have caused discontent among RTI activists in the State. Documents available
with Deccan Herald show that the government intended to impose postal charges
on the applicants as has been done by the Central government and the Andhra
Pradesh government.
It has also
intended to keep the investigative task of the CID out of the RTI ambit, while retaining the
administration and services. It has proposed to deploy police constables inside
the court hall of the Information Commissioner.
The most
contentious issue is blacklisting ‘mischievous’ RTI applicants who habitually
harass officials by filing applications. In the meeting, the subject was
dropped as there is no such provision in the RTI Act and because it may lead to
confusion and misuse by the officialdom. Yet, RTI activists are worried that
the government may try to push it through the backdoor.
Veeresh
Belur, an RTI activist who accessed the documents, said, “We have learnt that
efforts are being made to introduce the clause of blacklisting some RTI
activists. Any inclusion of this clause for temporary relief may kill the
spirit of the RTI Act and result in misuse by the officials to deny
information.”
Other RTI
activists too opposed the imposition of postal charges on the applicants as the
RTI Act does not speak of any such provision.
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