Business Standard: New Delhi: Wednesday, April 25, 2018.
With almost 6
million RTI applications filed every year, India’s Right to Information Act is
the world’s most extensively used transparency legislation. However, the
government’s proposed amendments to the RTI Act threaten the very foundations
of this empowering law.
Attempt to
dilute the Act
In April 2017
the government put out a set of Draft Rules proposing amendments to the RTI
Act. They include permitting the withdrawal of appeals based on a written
communication by the appellant and the closure of an RTI query upon the death
of the appellant. This means information seekers could be browbeaten into
withdrawing applications. Also, if the death of an appellant leads to the
automatic closure of the RTI query, information seekers and whistle- blowers
will be even more vulnerable to assault than they already are.
Another
proposed amendment allows central and state governments to fix the salaries of
the Information Commissioners (IC), which have so far been on a par with those
of the officials of the Election Commission. “If the government decides the
salaries of ICs the independence of the commissions could be compromised,” says
Anjali Bhardwaj of SatarkNagarikSangathan (SNS), a citizen rights body based in
Delhi.
Information
delayed, information denied
A March 2018
study on the efficiency of India’s State Information Commissions conducted by
SNS and the Centre for Equity Studies (CES) gives insights into the problems
that beset the RTI mechanism. The Act lays down that an RTI query is to be
replied to within 30 days of its receipt by the IC. However, the study found
that if a query were to be filed in West Bengal today, it would be addressed
only in 43 years!
RTI
campaigner Amitava Choudhury filed an RTI application in 2008 seeking
information on appointments under the West Bengal College Service Commission.
When he did not get a reply, he filed a complaint in 2009. That complaint was
heard only this year.He’s still awaiting the information he’d asked for.
Mahiti Adhikar
Gujarat Pahel, which operates an RTI helpline in Gujarat, estimates that barely
three out of 10 queries they help citizens file get a reply within the
stipulated 30 days. “The rest go into first and second appeals. In many cases,
the delay in receiving information makes it impossible to effectively address
the issue,” says MAGP’s Pankti Jog. Adds Amrita Johri of Rozi Roti
AdhikarAbhiyan, a network of organisations in Delhi which work in the field of
food security, “We come across dozens of people suffering because of the delay
in receiving information under the RTI law.”
Non-implementation
of suo motu disclosure
Many of
theRTI applications, especially those related to government social security
entitlements, need not have been filed at all had the public authorities
disclosed the information suomotu as stipulated under Section Four of the RTI
Act. As Bhardwaj points out, “As many as 70 per cent of the RTI applications
relate to information that should have been proactively provided under Section
4 of the RTI Act.”
35 per
cent rejection of RTI applications
Often,RTI
queries are rejected on the grounds that the information, if revealed, could
endanger national security, personal privacy, copyright and other such rights
listed under Sections eight, nine, 11 and 24 of the law. However, in its annual
report of 2016-17, the Central Information Commission states that 35 per cent
of applications were rejected for reasons listed under ‘others’. “Given that
the other reasons listed encompass all the limitations to information as laid
down by the law, one can only wonder why 35 per cent of the RTI applications
were rejected,” says Johri.
Manpower
crunch
Delayed
appointments to the State Information Commissions is one of the biggest reasons
for the high pendency rates of RTI queries. The SNS-CES study found that the
State Information Commissions of Maharashtra, Nagaland and Gujarat were
functioning without a Chief Information Commissioner during the period of the
study. “SICs in Kerala and Odisha were working without their full quota of
commissioners,” says Johri. “This means that people seeking information from
public authorities have little recourse to the independent appellate mechanism
if their right to information is violated”.
Activists
also question the practice of appointing retired bureaucrats as Information
Commissioners. “In West Bengal, for example, the State Chief Information
Commissioner retired as chief secretary of the state,” says Amitava Choudhury.
“Can they, with their close ties to the bureaucracy, be impartial?”
Activists
believe that the problems can easily be solved if there is the political will
to do so. Till then, India’s campaign against corruption could slow down to a
crawl.
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