DNA: Mumbai: Saturday, January 21,
2017.
The judiciary
is the biggest threat to the RTI Act, said former chief information
commissioner during his book release function on Thursday. 'RTI Act - Authentic
Interpretation of the Statute' which has been available in soft copy for a
while was formally release held at the Nehru Centre in Worli.
Among those present
were Ratnakar Gaikwad, state chief information commissioner who released the
book, Justice B N Srikrishna, who has written a foreword in it, and Pralhad
Kachare, co-author of the book with Gandhi among others.
Stating that
It is time people addressed "the elephant in the room", which is
constricting implementation of the RTI Act, Gandhi, referring to its court
orders said that they were clipping the RTI Act. "There have been orders
where in they upheld that information should be given and now they feel
otherwise. Our of 12 orders, only in two have they upheld that information
should be provided to the applicant," said Gandhi with whom Srikrishna and
Gaikwad disagreed.
He added,
"In case of Subhach Chandra Agarwal's matter where in he had sought
details of medical expenses claimed by judges, the court decided to constitute
a bigger bench in 2010 and has still not found time to do so."
"You do
not agree with Supreme Court's decision taken if you do not want to. But it has
the privilege of being the highest court. What court says, you have to accept
it. It is not the last court because it is right but is the highest level at
which the law is interpreted correctly. That is the bottomline," said
Srikrishna adding, "I was also not for disclosing the assets not because I
have too much of it but because people would get to know I have only Rs 10,000
as balance."
Gaikwad
stated that the RTI Act needed to be looked at again because there were issues
of compliance. "If other tribunals have contempt power, why not the
commission. The information commission too is a tribunal in some ways,"
said Gaikwad advocating that fining should be enhanced.
He also
stated that there are people who were misusing the RTI Act and that needs to be
acknowledged. "The usage of RTI Act can be divided into three categories.
The A category uses it for public interest while B for personal information to
solve grievances. The C category is the one which uses it for harrassment and
extortion," said Gaikwad.
"But can
only Sant Tukaram and not anguli maar Walmikis use RTI Act," asked one of
the people who attended the event. The session that was open a discussion and
question and answer saw one of the journalist, Seema Kamdar state that not all
RTI activist who have lost their life were genuine. Questions were also asked
about what is the stand of the authors on public authorities not having rules
that are in consonance of RTI Act and actually against it. "There are
instances where authorities have made rules that are against the Act. However,
that is not the case here," Kachare.
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