NDTV: New Delhi: Wednesday, June
29, 2016.
From securing
water connections to passports, better roads to ration cards, the Right to
Information has been a powerful tool in the hands of citizens to make
governments accountable. The landmark transparency law was the result of almost
two decades of toil by campaigners including Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey, starting
in Rajasthan which culminated into the formation of a national law. Till
recently that lesson was taught to school children in Rajasthan, but that's not
going to happen anymore.
As part of an
overhaul of school text books, the state education department has decided to
scrap the chapter on Right to Information or RTI, a move that has several RTI
campaigners seeing red.
In a strongly
worded letter to the Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, India's first Chief
Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah has asked for the chapter to be
reinstated.
"I am
dismayed to learn of the reported removal of the chapter from a school text
book containing references to the fundamental right to information," wrote
Mr Habibulla in his two-page letter to the chief minister, a copy of which is
available with NDTV.
"Rajasthan
is arguably the karambhoomi of the RTI... Section 26 of the RTI Act places
statutory duty on state governments to educate citizenry, particularly
disadvantaged segments of society about their rights to seek and receive
information from public authorities," writes Mr Habibullah.
RTI
campaigner Nikhil Dey, however, says that there is perhaps a larger political
conspiracy.
"This is
clearly a political decision and it is inexplicable why the BJP leadership
would want to go against what has been a people's movement in Rajasthan,"
said Mr Dey.
Since it
became law in 2005, millions of RTIs have been filed till now in states and
with the central government.
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