Indian
Express: Pune: Sunday, 18 October 2015.
Many RTI
activists were not allowed to attend the plenary sessions of the first Right to
Information (RTI) conference held under the NDA government on Friday and
Saturday in New Delhi. Also, an RTI activist from Pune received a last-minute
email, cancelling invites to the activists, citing security reasons.
Some of the
activists alleged that days prior to the conclave, background checks were
carried out on them. Their friends and families received calls from
intelligence agencies and were questioned about their “political affiliations”.
Pune-based
RTI activist Vijay Kumbhar alleged he received calls from intelligence
agencies, asking about Mumbai-based activist Bhaskar Prabhu. “Among other
things, I was asked about Prabhu’s political affiliation and work,” he said.
The two-day
annual RTI conference was hosted by the Central Information Commissioner (CIC).
It is usually addressed by either the President or the Prime Minister.
Attended by
all the CICs and State Information Commissioners (SIC), this conference has
seen sizeable participation from civil societies since 2007. Last year, the
conference was not held due to vacancy in the CIC bench.
Usually, SICs
nominate activists to attend this conference. Other than Vijay Kumbhar from
Pune, activists Bhaskar Prabhu, SK Nangiya, Sunil Ahiya and Mohammed Afzal from
Mumbai were recommended by the SIC for the conference.
The activists
received the email confirming their participation, months in advance. Then on
October 13, Prabhu got an email from the CIC, cancelling their invites on
account of the Prime Minister confirming his attendance at the event.
“Latest
message has come that Hon’ble PM is coming. Therefore, we are not forwarding
the invitation cards of five persons,” read the email, received on October 13.
However, the other participants got messages of confirmation from the CIC,
asking them to collect their invites.
“Most of us
had to attend a meeting with the National Campaign for People’ Right to
Information (NCPRI) in Delhi on October 14 and had reached. The mail from CIC
to Prabhu just confused us,” said Kumbhar.
On Friday,
the Prime Minister addressed the session at 10.30. Other than nine activists,
including Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey, none of those invited from the country were
allowed inside the hall.
“All of us
had emails from the CIC’s office confirming and asking us to collect our
invites, but we did not get the hard copy of the invites till the last moment,”
Kumbhar said.
Even after
the Prime Minister left the hall, the activists were not allowed to enter till
after 1 pm. Prabhu said that only activists whose names were mentioned by the
nine activists, who had been given entry earlier, could attend the remaining
session. Kumbhar boycotted it in protest.
Prabhu added
that although they were allowed to enter, there was no designated sitting
arrangement for the civil society. “The whole incident was very unfortunate and
this has happened for the first time in the past many years,” he said.
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