The Quint: New Delhi: Wednesday, July 25, 2018.
A series of
RTI queries seeking to lift the veil of secrecy off the Srikrishna Committee
tasked with drafting India’s data protection bill has met with repeated denials
of information.
Five separate
RTI queries between December 2017 and June 2018 have managed to squeeze out
limited information about the working of the Justice Srikrishna Committee that
the Centre had formed on 31 July 2017. Apart from questions regarding its
transparency, the ten-member committee has also been questioned regarding its
composition and inclusiveness.
Through
responses to the RTI queries we now know that the committee has met a total of
seven times between 8 September 2017 and 15 May 2018. However, requests for
further information on these meetings have been repeatedly denied and only
partially revealed after follow-up RTIs and an appeal before an appellate authority.
“What is so
secretive about the working of the Srikrishna Committee on data protection?”
asked activist Anjali Bhardwaj, who had filed the requests.
“We believe
that the right to privacy is of utmost importance and the data protection law
will have serious ramifications for the country. This is why we are asking for
information that should anyway be in the public domain,” said Bhardwaj.
The
Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), under which the
committee functions, has denied information about the following questions:
- Minutes of all the meetings held after the second meeting on 3 October 2017.
- Agenda of meetings held after the second meeting.
- Documents provided to the committee for each meeting subsequent to the second meeting.
- Presentations made by committee members Arghya Sengupta and Gulshan Rai during the first two meetings.
- Copy of the draft bill provided to the committee by MeitY.
- Copy of all comments/submissions received in response to the White Paper.
- Records containing views of the committee on submissions received in response to the White Paper.
A
chronological reading of the RTI requests reveal the struggle to seek accountability
from a Committee set up by the central government.
31 July 2017:
The Srikrishna Committee is set up to “identify key data protection issues” and
suggest “a draft data protection bill”.
2 December:
Anjali Bhardwaj files first RTI asking for 1) Date of each meeting; 2) Copy of
agenda (including all annexures) for each meeting including all records,
material etc circulated; 3) Copy of all documents/records provided to the
Committee for each meeting; 4) Copy of minutes of the proceedings of each meeting;
5) Names and designation of persons who attended each meeting.
20 December:
Response reveals the Committee had met three times till then but refuses to
submit agenda, documents and the minutes of the meetings.
27 December:
Bhardwaj files the first appeal requesting the first appellate authority to
direct the Public Information Officer to furnish details of the unanswered RTI
queries.
2 February
2018: Following the first appeal, the Ministry of Electronics and Information
Technology (MeitY) furnishes details about the three previously unanswered
queries. Among the details revealed through the minutes of the first two
meetings were i) Arghya Sengupta and Gulshan Rai had made presentations about
right to privacy and technical aspects of privacy respectively and ii) MeitY
had provided a draft data protection bill to the Committee for consideration.
17 May:
Following the information received, Bharadwaj and Amrita Johri file three RTI
queries seeking information on i) the presentations made by Sengupta and Rai
ii) the number and contents of the submissions made to the committee by the
public upon release of its white paper in November and iii) minutes and
documents of the meetings held after the second meeting on 3 October.
20 June: The
responses to the three separate queries once again stonewall against any
substantial information.
In response
to the request on presentations made, the reply said it would “not be
appropriate to provide the presentations requested at this stage without taking
the Committee into confidence as this may interfere with the functioning”.
Bhardwaj
contests the reasoning provided in the three responses, calling them “totally
illegal denials”. Information can be denied if it is exempt under the RTI Act
as specified in Section 8 or 9 of the Act. However, the department has not
invoked any of the legal exemptions in its reply.
In reply to
the requests for copies of submissions made to the Committee in response to the
white paper, the information officer’s written submission said that this
information “is confidential and meant for examination of the Committee only”
and hence “not available for public dissemination”.
With regards
to the third request pertaining to copies of the agenda, minutes and documents
related to all the subsequent meetings after its second meetings, the response
said that “it may not be appropriate” to disclose such information as “it may
interfere with the functioning”.
The denial of
information comes in the backdrop of an RTI amendment bill introduced in
Parliament, which many activists suspect is aimed at diluting the strength of
the Act.
“Through its
attitude towards our legitimate requests for information, what the government
has clearly indicated is that it is just not interested in sharing information
about anything that it finds inconvenient,” Bharadwaj said.
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