Times of India: New Delhi: Wednesday, August 22, 2018.
After raising
a red flag over proposed amendments to the RTI Act of 2005, chief information
commissioner Shridhar Acharyulu has questioned the draft Personal Data
Protection Bill 2018 prepared by Justice B N Srikrishna, referring to it as a
tool that can give "more autocratic powers to the government of the day
than the Maintenance of Internal Security Act, 1971 did during the Emergency
days."
Calling the
draft legislation an attempt to weaken people's right to information, the media
as well as the freedom of speech, Acharyulu has opposed the proposed
legislation on grounds that it seeks to undermine the existing RTI Act and to
withhold information for frivolous reasons.
The draft
legislation seeks to dilute Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act and says that information
that 'relates to' personal data and which is 'likely to' to cause 'harm' to the
person regarding whom information is sought can be enough ground to withhold
information under RTI. Explaining the import of the proposed dilution,
Acharyalu said, "Basically, this means that if someone asks under RTI
whether a public servant is promoted despite disciplinary action, this could be
considered information relating to 'personal' data and be denied."
Raising
objections over the use of "vague terminology" in the draft
legislation and calling it an effort at obfuscating, rather than bringing
clarity to the process of seeking information, the central information
commissioner has argued that the defence of 'privacy' should not be used to
"shield crimes, wrongs or irregularities." Acharyalu also alleged
there is a "serious internal conflict" between the existing RTI Act
and the proposed PDPA bill.
He also said
the report by the Justice Srikrishna-led committee "seriously
interferes" with the freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)
and imposes "unreasonable restrictions on grounds of privacy."
Acharyalu said, "The committee incharge of preparing the report on
Personal Data Protection Authority Bill should have distinguished private data
from private information in the context of RTI and the need for disclosure in
public interest."
The Data
Protection Bill, in toto, should not apply to public servants and to their data
except for securing their 'sensitive personal data' like passwords, financial
and health data among others. Other service related data of public servants
cannot be considered private data."