Make pro-active disclosure by Pvt bodies compulsory

The Afternoon Voice: Wednesday, October 24, 2018.

Central government through DoPT should issue an order to cover all Public-Private-Partnerships PPPs, sports-bodies, cooperative-societies and other such bodies affecting lives of millions to be directly under RTI Act to avoid usual ex-party stay-orders by courts on CIC-verdicts obtained after much effort. Several division-benches of the Supreme Court have repeatedly endorsed the bitter fact of ex-party stay-orders followed by regular adjournments to be a lacuna of our justice-delivery-system.

The RTI Act can also be considered to be applied to private companies having turn-overs over some stipulated amount especially for those related to consumer products or services. For rest, others provision of pro-active disclosures of certain basic information may be made compulsory on websites.

Even the Central Chief Information Commission in a media-interview indicated that the Central Information Commission is deliberating on a mechanism for pro-active disclosures by private entities involved in public-work. The statement came after it was noted in a CIC-verdict that even though four million candidates appear every year for examinations conducted by Institute of Banking Personnel Selection IBPS, it is not a public authority under the RTI Act.

Many aspects of day-to-day life like banking and telecommunications are presently dominated by the private sector with a lot of malpractices to mint money. Even cooperative-giant IFFCO gifting properties worth hundreds of crores to its office-bearers out of profits minted through annual fertiliser-subsidies worth tens of thousands of crores is not a public authority under the RTI Act.