Very few RTI activists invited for 10th Central Information Commission convention

Economic Times: New Delhi: Thursday, 15 October 2015.

The Modi government's discomfort with the Right to Information Act is now playing out in the Central Information Commission convention with the watchdog edging out civil society stakeholders from the annual two-day event.

Only a handful of RTI activists, including Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey, Shekhar Singh, Amrita Johri, Anjali Bharadwaj, Venkatesh Nayak and Lokesh Batra have been invited for the convention, triggering a furore among activists.

Despite repeated requests and representations from Batra, Nayak and Bharadwaj, CIC has broken convention and decided to keep activists out of the meet.

Speaking to ET, Batra said he would be boycotting the event. Bharadwaj said she has to present a paper and would just do that and come back. Dey said, "I have an invite but I haven't been told if I am participating on a panel or I have a paper to present but this edging out of activists is unprecedented and uncalled for.

We don't know the reasons also." He said that the move was inexplicable, especially when CIC had asked different organisations working in the field to propose names of participants for the convention.

The change is significant especially because this year the transparency legislation completes a decade of implementation. Over the last eight years, the civil society has been a major part of the CIC convention.

Former chief information commissioner Wajahat Habibullah said, "civil society has been a major part of the annual convention. We used to invite activists from all the states as they provided us with their experiences on how the Act is really functioning across India. I don't know the reason why only limited people have been called but when we organised it we always invited all stakeholders."

Several activists from other states planned their travel to Delhi thinking that with PM's changing schedule the invites would be re-printed and they would collect them from CIC office. However, there has been no such intimation. Sarbajit Roy, another activist, was told that after Modi's inaugural address, the convention would be opened for everybody.

"This seems like a tall claim because without invites, activists would not be able to venture near Vigyan Bhawan," said Roy.

Despite repeated attempts, CIC Vijai Sharma refused to comment. With less than two days left for the October 16-17 convention, the exact format is not clear either.