The
Hindu: New Delhi: Wednesday, 08 April 2015.
11 out of 25
have never reported any RTI information to the CIC.
India’s top
security and intelligence agencies consistently refuse to give out any
information about the Right to Information requests they receive, and those
that do, reject the bulk of queries they receive, new data shows.
Twenty-five
of India’s top security agencies are exempt from most of the requirements of
the RTI Act, but are required to provide access to information if it relates to
allegations of corruption and human rights violations.
They also
need to appoint public information officers and submit reports to the Central
Information Commission about the number of RTI applications received, amount of
fees collected and details of cases where access to information was rejected.
The
Delhi-based Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative analysed annual CIC reports
from 2005 to 2014 and found that 11 of these security agencies, including the
National Investigation Agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, the Special
Protection Group and the Enforcement Directorate, have never reported any RTI
information to the CIC. The Central Bureau of Investigation stopped reporting
data after it was included in the list of largely exempt organisations in 2012.
Rejection
rate high
Even among
the agencies which do submit data to the CIC, the rate of rejection is very
high, the data shows.
The
Intelligence Bureau’s rejection rate between 2008 and 2014 averaged 98 per
cent, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence rejected all RTI requests it
received, and the Narcotics Control Bureau rejected 87 per cent of all
requests.
The Border
Security Force and the Central Reserve Police Force did relatively better the
BSF rejected just over half of all queries it received and the CRPF rejecting
just over a third.
‘No
oversight’
“Most of the
intelligence agencies are not established by any law made by Parliament. Many
of them do not even have their budget and expenditure figures mentioned in the
documents submitted to Parliament for approval every year. There is simply no
Parliamentary oversight on their functioning,” Venkatesh Nayak, coordinator,
CHRI’s Access to Information programme, said.
“Disclosing
RTI statistics does not in any manner jeopardise national security external
or internal,” Mr. Nayak said.
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