The Telegraph India: New Delhi: Monday, July 30, 2018.
Forced to defer introduction of the Right to
Information (Amendment) Bill, 2018, in the face of stiff opposition in
Parliament and outside, the Narendra Modi government appears to have brought it
into effect without parliamentary approval through an advertisement.
On July 26, the department of personnel, public
grievances & pensions issued an advertisement for appointment of
information commissioners in the Central Information Commission (CIC) that said
the "salary, allowances and other terms and conditions of service of the
ICs shall be as may be specified at the time of appointment of the selected
candidate/s''.
Under the existing law, the salary, allowances and
other terms and conditions of service for the chief information commissioner
and information commissioners are all clearly specified. Sub-section (5) of
Section 13 of the RTI Act, 2005, provides that these shall be the same as that
for the chief election commissioner and election commissioners respectively.
The amendment bill, listed for introduction in the
Rajya Sabha on July 19, ran into opposition precisely because it sought to
change this and empower the Centre to decide the tenure, salary and allowances
of information commissioners at the CIC and in the state information
commissions through rules.
The bill was
deferred indefinitely after the Opposition threw its weight behind transparency
advocates opposing the changes on the ground that these are intended to weaken
the edifice on which RTI stands.
Venkatesh
Nayak, coordinator of the Access to Information Programme at the Commonwealth
Human Rights Initiative, told The Telegraph "the government seems to have
taken it for granted that Parliament will approve the amendments when the
reality is that the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha has demanded that it be
referred to a select committee''.
In his
opinion and that of lawyer Prashant Bhushan, the advertisement was issued also
to show the Supreme Court that the government is trying to fill up vacancies in
the CIC.
At present,
there are four. By December another four information commissioners, including
the chief, will retire. That will leave the CIC with just three information
commissioners.
Anjali
Bhardwaj, who along with two other RTI activists moved the Supreme Court for
filling up the vacancies, said the advertisement was issued a day before
Friday's hearing to avoid embarrassment in court. Details of the ad were not
widely known then, and the government could cite it to argue that it was acting
on filling up the vacancies.
"We will
file an affidavit to show how the government is making a mockery of the RTI law
and federalism,'' Bhardwaj said, pointing out that the Centre through the bill
will become the appointment authority for information commissioners in the
State Information Commissions too.
Referring to
an advertisement placed by the DoPT in September 2016 - months before the first
two vacancies were to come up in the CIC - Bhardwaj said the latest ad does not
even mention how many posts are up for appointment.
"In
fact, the court even asked what happened to applications received in response
to the September 2016 advertisement'' as till date no appointment had been made
for vacancies that came up in January and February 2017.
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