Deccan Herald: opinion: Sunday, 16 March 2025.
Thousands of citizens
continue to use RTI to make the government more transparent and accountable at
all levels.
Last month, an anguish-ridden article describing the shoddy manner in which the Central Information Commission disposed of a bunch of RTI appeals floated across cyberspace. Its author is not a ‘busybody’ who vexes public authorities with frivolous, vague or voluminous information requests. He is a trained chemical engineer, an intellectual property rights (IPR) lawyer educated at some of the best law schools in India and the US and a whistleblower who monitors the drug regulation regime in India. Frustrated that the Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) nixed eight of his nine efforts to obtain information from public sector institutions responsible for providing healthcare, testing medicines, and procuring life-saving drugs, he confessed to joining the ranks of the disillusioned who are sounding the death knell of the RTI Act.
Last month, an anguish-ridden article describing the shoddy manner in which the Central Information Commission disposed of a bunch of RTI appeals floated across cyberspace. Its author is not a ‘busybody’ who vexes public authorities with frivolous, vague or voluminous information requests. He is a trained chemical engineer, an intellectual property rights (IPR) lawyer educated at some of the best law schools in India and the US and a whistleblower who monitors the drug regulation regime in India. Frustrated that the Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) nixed eight of his nine efforts to obtain information from public sector institutions responsible for providing healthcare, testing medicines, and procuring life-saving drugs, he confessed to joining the ranks of the disillusioned who are sounding the death knell of the RTI Act.
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