The Wire: New Delhi: Monday, May 30,
2016.
RTI activists
have praised the Delhi high court’s ruling of an earlier order directing the
Centre to regularly upload all laws and amendments, saying it will improve
transparency and access to information for citizens.
In a landmark
ruling that Right to Information activists believe will improve transparency,
the Delhi high court has upheld an order of the Central Information Commission
(CIC) directing the legislative department of the government to upload on its
official website all laws enacted and amended by parliament.
In keeping
with the CIC’s order, it has further directed the Centre to ensure that the
official email addresses of its officials remain functional.
Through the
order, the court also sought to clamp down on those government officials who
resort to unnecessary judicial challenges. It said it was taking “judicial
notice of the fact that in challenging the imposition of costs of Rs. 10,000,
the Government of India would have spent more money in filing the present writ
petition.” Consequently, it directed that the cost of Rs. 10,000 that the CIC
was directed to pay should be recovered from the salaries of the officials who
authorised the filing of the petition.
The CIC
order
The complaint
had first been filed by Vansh Sharad Gupta, a law student from the National Law
School of India University, Bangalore, in July 2012, when he wished to study
the Indian Christian Marriage Act 1972 online.
When his
email to the Legislative Department bounced back, Vansh approached the CIC
stating that as a law student he needed to refer to several bare Acts but the
website was not providing any assistance. He demanded that bare Acts be
available in PDF format.
The order
came over three years later in November 2015, when the CIC observed that “it is
the minimum responsibility of the state to provide updated information about
amendments, which will go a long way in helping people. The access to law is
not just a requirement of Law students and law researchers, but a necessity of
all citizens.” In the order, Information Commissioner M. Sridhar Acharyulu also
directed the legislative department to pay Rs. 10,000 to the library of the
National Law School of India University under Section 19(8)(b) of the RTI Act.
The CIC
illustrated the necessity of informing people about changes in law through the
following example: “Parliament, by the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013, has
amended section 100 of Indian Penal Code, which provides a right of the private
defence of the body even to the extent of causing death in case of acid attack.
Many men and women are not even aware of the self-defence right that they can
even kill the assailant if the latter is attacking to kill, rape or throw acid,
or cause grievous hurt.”
The CIC urged
the department to “recognise the urgency and significance of the issue,
expedite the process, allocate more funds to employ more personnel and complete
the process of updating as soon as possible.”
In view of
the complainant’s claim that most of his emails to the government had failed to
go through, the CIC also directed the Centre to examine the functionality of
the email accounts of officials.
Responses
Rather than
taking the order in the right spirit, the Centre decided to challenge it in the
Delhi high court, only to draw flak for not being serious about correcting its
flaws.
The court
categorically stated that it is “not an appellate Court of the CIC.” It
reprimanded the Centre for its casual approach. “Technical and procedural
arguments cannot be allowed to come in the way of substantial justice. The
directions given by the CIC in the impugned order are not only fair and
reasonable but also promote the concept of rule of law. It is unfortunate that
the petitioner did not take the initiative on its own to upload the latest amended
bare Acts,” it ruled.
The
judgment has been commended by RTI activists.
Venkatesh
Nayak of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative said that though the student
had little use for the information by the time the case was decided, the order
remains significant. In his words: “The bureaucratic juggernaut in India reacts
slowly or not at all. It is very welcome that the government has now been
reminded of its duty to publish laws in their updated form and not piecemeal the
main enactment in one place and later amendments as separate documents.”
Nayak said
that the ruling would also tackle the problem of the inaccessibility of rules
and regulations made under a legislation, even while the texts of laws enacted
by parliament are available on official websites.
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