CIC and state information commissions want a legal filter in RTI act

Economic Times:New Delhi: Monday, November 30, 2015.

The Central Information Commission and the state information commissions want the government to introduce a legal filter in the Right to Information Act to sift out vexatious, flippant and frivolous applications. The National Federation of Information Commissions in India, the apex body headed by the chief of CIC, has recommended that the Centre introduce a filter in the transparency legislation so that the RTI Act cannot be misused by applicants.

"We have had talks with the state commissions. They are unanimous in their view that genuine applications need to be separated from frivolous applications," Chief Information Commissioner Vijai Sharma told ET. "Vexatious and frivolous applications are clogging the system," he said. The federation at its meeting last week decided to recommend to the government that a legal filter be introduced.

"It needs to be brought in the Act through an amendment or in whatever way the government feels right," Sharma said. Citing examples from CIC, Sharma said a retired Air Force official had filed 3,588 applications in two years with Air Force authorities seeking almost similar information from different public authorities. The decision, however, has irked civil society. "It is absolutely impossible to objectively define 'vexatious' or 'frivolous'," said Anjali Bharadwaj of National Campaign for People's Right to Information. "Frivolous means unimportant.

If a widow does not get her pension of `300 and seeks information, it might be an unimportant matter for a government official but for her it might be her only source of income," she said. She said further, "Similarly, vexatious means annoying. Unfortunately most RTI requests are annoying for all officials." Bharadwaj said if the government feels it is being burdened by RTI requests it should analyse the most frequently asked questions and voluntarily disclose the list on their websites as Sec 4 of RTI Act mandates. "Our study shows less than 1% of applications can be classified as vaguely frivolous," she added.

The commissions also want the government to introduce an undertaking with the RTI application that the applicant has not sought the information earlier.