COUNTERVIEW: New Delhi: Friday,
May 06, 2016.
The National Campaign
for Peoples’ Right to Information (NCPRI), India's apex body of RTI
organizations, has accused the Modi government, in office for two years, of
failing to make any progress on anti-corruption legislations, insisting, “Even
the existing legislations and mechanisms are being undermined.”
The Whistle
Blowers Protection Act (WBP Act) was passed in 2014, after 12 years of the
murder of whislteblower Satyendra Dubey after families of whistleblowers and
activists of NCPRI held protests for over 20 days. The Act provides protection
of identity for whistleblowers and safeguards against their victimization,
NCPRI activists said in a media press conference in Delhi.
Instead of
promulgating rules to operationalise the WBP law, the government has “moved an
amendment bill in Parliament which seeks to severely dilute the Act”, activists
pointed out, adding, the amendments seek to “remove safeguards available to
whistleblowers from prosecution under the Official Secrets Act.”
Further, the
amendments have introduced “wide-ranging exclusions by stating that disclosures
should not contain information which would prejudicially affect the
sovereignty, integrity, security, strategic, scientific or economic interests
of the State.”
“The current
status of the WBP Amendment Bill is not clear”, NCPRI co-convener Anjali
Bharadwaj said, adding, “Whereas the debate on the bill in the Rajya Sabha and
the proposal to refer it to a select committee was not concluded, on April 28,
2016 the concerned Minister, in reply to a question in Parliament, stated that
the Amendment Bill had been sent to a committee.”
Dhananjay
Dubey, Satyendra Dubey's brother, said, “Despite assurances from BJP leaders
Arun Jaitley and Ravi Shankar Prasad that they were committed to the WBP Act,
the government had taken no steps to prevent deaths of whistleblowers. Close to
60 people have been killed in the last few years for exposing corruption and
wrongdoing in the vernment.”
NCPRI's
senior activist Sanjay Sahni added, lives of whistleblowers like his colleague
Ram Kumar Thakur could have been saved if the WBP Act was operationalised. “Ram
Kumar Thakur wrote to the
Police and
the state government seeking protection, however no action was taken”, he said.
As for the
Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act (LL Act), activists said, instead of operationalizing
it, the activists said, as amendment bill, called the the Lokpal and Lokayuktas
and Other Related Law (Amendment) Bill, 2014, was deliberated upon by the
Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice, which
presented its report in December 2015.
“Among other
issues, the amendments seek to dilute the Act by exempting bureaucrats from
declaring assets and liabilities of their spouses and dependent children”,
activists said.
“Further, the
amendment does away with the requirement of public disclosure of the asset
declarations on the grounds that disclosure of such information might expose
public servants and their families to threats and kidnappings”, they added.
Nikhil Dey,
the other co-convener of the NCPRI, said, despite public disclosure of asset
declarations of lakhs of candidates contesting elections across the country and
of judges of the Supreme Court and high courts, “no evidence of
threats/blackmail had come to light and, therefore, there is no rationale for
this amendment.”
Similarly,
Dey said, the grievance redress (GR) Bill, which the the Prime Minister's
Office (PMO) said in July 2014 that it was “part of Immediate Thrust Areas of
the Government”, is likely to be dropped.
“In March
2016, in response to a question in Parliament, the government made no reference
to the legislation and instead stated that it was preparing a scheme known as
Delivery of Services and Grievances Redressal Scheme”, he said.
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