Garhwal Post: Dehradun: Thursday, 15 January 2026.
In our democratic journey,
the Right to Information (RTI) Act of 2005 was hailed as a landmark
administrative reform. It represented a shift in the relationship between
citizens and the state turning secrecy and silence in public administration
into a regime of disclosure and accountability. The enactment of the RTI Act
was believed to be signalling a welcome change in the thinking of our policy
makers as it accepted the need to move from the culture of secrecy to greater
openness. The right to information had the widest possible reach, covering the
legislative, judiciary and executive branches of the governments as well as
non-government institutions receiving government grants and subsidies. The
access to information was extensive with maximum possible disclosure and
minimum exemptions. Few exemptions allowed under section 8 of the Act were also
not absolute as they could be subjected to public interest test – overriding
exemptions if the benefit of disclosure of information outweighed the harm
caused to the public authority or the protected interest. It was thus one of
the most progressive laws ever passed by parliament with stringent penalties
for failing to provide the required information or preventing access to
information in any way. The Act also imposed obligations on public authorities
to disseminate maximum information suo-motu with a view to reducing the cost to
the citizens and the work load of the public authorities. In the words of the
then Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, “The independent appeal mechanism along
with extensive disclosure obligations and the provision of punitive action
added teeth to the right, making RTI a potent instrument for good governance.”
Right to Information was seen as a “sunshine law” that could open up the vaults
of public power.
There was curiosity mixed with apprehension in different quarters. The government of Uttarakhand was prompt in initiating preparatory action immediately after the RTI Bill was passed by the Parliament. A taskforce was constituted in the nodal department to make systematic arrangements for creating required institutional infrastructure for handling RTI requests of the citizens. The commitment of the high ranking officers was total who had volunteered to be designated as Public Information Officers (PIOs), and First Appeal Authorities (FAAs). Initially, the Chief Secretary and the Principal Secretaries were designated as First Appeal Authorities and the Secretaries/ Additional Secretaries as Public Information Officers. The then Chief Secretary, Dr RS Tolia, took voluntary retirement one year ahead of his active service and was appointed as the first Chief Information Commissioner in the Uttarakhand Information Commission. However, the euphoria did not last long. As soon as the citizens started exercising their new found right under this law, the public authorities started feeling the heat emanating from the information seekers and the dictates of the independent appellate authority, the State Information Commission. The pressure mounted over time as more and more users of RTI started seeking information inconvenient to public authorities, disturbing their established “work culture”. The feel good factor turned to souring of relations and soon the public authorities became defensive and reactive.
This led to the dilution of the commitment in the implementation of the RTI Act as senior officers started relinquishing the responsibilities as PIOs and FAAs by delegating the responsibility to the junior officers down to the level of section officers and undersecretaries, thereby degrading the RTI implementation process. The main reasons for not being able to cope with the challenge was noncompliance of the mandate of maintaining the official records duly catalogued and indexed in a manner which would have facilitated the supply of requisite information in time, the mind-set of not revealing in-house secrets to outsiders and of course the fear of exposing the irregularities committed under the opaque regime. This set the new phase in the administration of RTI regime marked by tightening of the grip on both the demand and the supply sides of RTI management. The demand constrained was created by increasing threats, intimidation, assaults and killing of RTI activists. RTI activists seeking public interest disclosures are socially boycotted, mocked, abused and serially threatened. Two decades on, the brutal reality of RTI implementation is that more than 100 RTI activists have been killed in the country, 187 assaulted, 191 harassed or threatened. These are the figures which are reported in the national dailies based on the report of crime record bureaus. There must be many more such cases which go unrecorded and reported. For example, 4 RTI activists killed by criminals in Uttarakhand do not find mention in any report and are not known to the people even in Dehradun. This was evident from the RTI debates conducted by the RTI Club in the Universities and colleges where the students highlighted killing of RTI activists in Bihar, Maharashtra, etc., but not in Uttarakhand. For the sake of record, it would be appropriate to mention here the names of RTI martyrs of Uttarakhand who were murdered for exposing corruption in the state. They are (1) the late Jagdish Prasad Chauhan of Ferupur Village Haridwar on 14-02-2012, (2) the late Raj Kumar Raheja of Karanpur village, Kashipur on 12-08-2013, (3) the late Gajpal Singh of Kandola village, Pauri on 8-08-2014, and (4) the late advocate Rajesh Suri of Dehradun on 30-11-2014.
Section 27 of RTI Act authorises the appropriate governments to make rules to carry out the provisions of the Act. But the rule making power of the state governments is limited largely to fixing of the fee for seeking information and prescribing the procedure for hearing and deciding appeals by the information commissions. The Uttarakhand government while exercising its rules making power, notified the new Rules in 2012 which totally distorted the whole process of seeking and supplying information under the Act. The four page rules prescribed initially in 2005 were expanded to 15 pages of guidelines making the procedure cumbersome and difficult to carry out the provisions of the Act. It created the stalemate in the implementation of RTI because State Information Commissioners resolved not to adopt the new rules prescribed by the state government which were against the very spirit of the Act. It took one full year of intense lobbying by the Uttarakhand RTI Club and the State Information Commission, including judicial intervention to get the Rules amended in 2013 to restore implementation process. It is not that this type of antipathy towards RTI Act is prevalent in Uttarakhand only. The situation in other states is much worse.
A study conducted by Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative shows that against the notional Rs 10 application fee charged by the central government and 24 state governments, Arunachal Pradesh charges a whopping Rs 500 application fee for information related to tenders, bids, quotations or business contracts and Rs 50 for other information. Sikkim charges Rs 100, Haryana, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh Rs 50, and Odisha, Maharashtra and Gujarat charge Rs 20 application fee for seeking information. Similarly, while the central government and 23 state governments do not charge any fee for filing first appeal, some state governments namely Sikkim, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh charge Rs 100, each, Odisha Rs25 and Maharashtra Rs 20. Then there are States where State Information Commissions are virtually defunct and states where pendency of second appeals has mounted so much that it will take years for the appellants to get their chance of hearing. This situation has arisen mainly because the Information Commissions are grossly understaffed due to administrative neglect. In Uttarakhand also the State Information Commission could not function for months for want of the requisite Information Commissioners two times during the last five years. The state of apathy is such that the activists are forced to file public interest litigations in the courts to get the vacancies filled in the Information Commissions. In 2023, advocate Anjali Bharadwaj had to file PIL in the Supreme Court seeking filling up of 8 vacancies out of 11 sanctioned posts in the Central Information Commission, which were lying vacant for a long time. As a result, the pendency of second appeals had risen from 3134 on 1 November 2023 to 20,437 on 1 December 2024. When responses are delayed for years the right becomes illusory. By 2024-`25, appeals and complaints pending across states and central information commission have reportedly soared in to hundreds of thousands.
Legislative amendment is another pet tactic of bureaucrats` and politicians to get rid of the inconvenient RTI queries. The first unsuccessful attempt to weaken the grip of RTI was made early in 2006 when ‘opinion’ and ‘advice’, read file notes, were sought to be excluded from the definition of information. Under the bureaucratic pressure the cabinet had decided to remove file notes as an item of information but due to strong resistance from the civil society organisations, the cabinet decision was not notified. The political class too has not been happy with the way the RTI Act became a potential tool in the hands of citizens to demand accountability from public authorities. In 2010, RTI activists Anil Bairwal and Subhash Chandra Agrawal had separately sought information from some political parties about the donations received by them. Barring CPI, all other parties responded saying that they did not come under the purview of RTI Act and hence they were not obliged to provide the requisite information. The duo filed appeals with the Central Information Commission against the denial of information which resulted in the landmark ruling of the CIC in 2013 declaring that the political parties fall under the ambit of the RTI Act because formation and operation of the political parties is regulated by the Election Commission which is a public authority. Besides the political parties are also substantially financed directly and indirectly by the government it said. This raised a storm in the political circles creating an awkward situation in which the lawmakers themselves opposed the idea of being governed by the law made by them. In view of the strident opposition of political parties the government decided to amend the RTI Act to keep political parties out of its purview stating that any association or body of individuals registered or recognised as political party under the Representation of the Peoples Act 1951 shall not be treated as Public Authority as defined under section 2(h) of the RTI Act 2005.
The political class was not satisfied with this liberty from RTI. In a discussion in the Rajya Sabha in 2016, some members asked if the government would consider amending RTI Act since it was passed in a hurry in 2005 and is being misused by citizens who with no locus standi (Paanwala, Chaiwala) end up asking the government questions about the country`s missile system or international relations. It was also said that RTI was preventing the officials from taking decisions and some RTI activists have made it a business. Some MPs while venting ire against RTI Act reportedly went to the extent of suggesting that the Act was passed under US pressure. No wonder that the government effected a major degrading amendment in 2019 in the RTI Act. With this amendment, the central government downgraded the status of the Chief Information Commissioners and Information Commissioners and gained discretion to determine the tenure, salaries and conditions of service of the central and state information commissioners thus diminishing their autonomy and increasing potential executive interference.
More recently, the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act 2023 stealthily dilutes the core of the RTI Act. Earlier, the RTI Act empowered citizens to access information about public official`s credentials, assets and conduct if public interest so warranted. The DPDP Act has amended some overlapping provisions especially section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act in a way that broadens exemptions under the cover of personal data. The new Act creates a blanket exemption for personal information without an overriding public interest test even if the person is known to be corrupt. DPDP Act imposes fines up to Rs 250 crores for wrongful disclosure of personal data. The fear of such harsh penalties will deter any PIO or appellate authority to disclose requisite personal information of the erring person. The RTI Act is based on the principle that, in democracy, the government holds information as a custodian and all information by default belongs to citizens. The DPDP Act weakens this premise by giving primacy to data protection and privacy often overriding transparency. It thus undermines the basic democratic principle of the rule of the people. It is unfortunate that the dilution of RTI Act through legislatively amendments is being effected at a time when we pride ourselves to be living in new India and when the country is aspiring to be a developed nation by 2047. One of the indicators of a developed society is good governance, free of corruption and characterised by equality, transparency and accountability. Our ranking in the Transparency International`s corruption index last year was 96 against previous year`s 93. This shows that we are moving in the opposite direction.
The two decades of RTI Act presents a story of both promise and challenge. Originally the law was transformative. It empowered citizens to access information about working of the state, strengthened accountability and opened the governance. But over time, this promise has been undermined by institutional neglect and legislative dilution. Yet all is not lost. The basic structure is intact. What is needed is a renewed commitment both in law and practice.
(The writer is President, RTI Club, Uttarakhand. Views expressed are personal)
 |
| By Dr BP Maithani |
There was curiosity mixed with apprehension in different quarters. The government of Uttarakhand was prompt in initiating preparatory action immediately after the RTI Bill was passed by the Parliament. A taskforce was constituted in the nodal department to make systematic arrangements for creating required institutional infrastructure for handling RTI requests of the citizens. The commitment of the high ranking officers was total who had volunteered to be designated as Public Information Officers (PIOs), and First Appeal Authorities (FAAs). Initially, the Chief Secretary and the Principal Secretaries were designated as First Appeal Authorities and the Secretaries/ Additional Secretaries as Public Information Officers. The then Chief Secretary, Dr RS Tolia, took voluntary retirement one year ahead of his active service and was appointed as the first Chief Information Commissioner in the Uttarakhand Information Commission. However, the euphoria did not last long. As soon as the citizens started exercising their new found right under this law, the public authorities started feeling the heat emanating from the information seekers and the dictates of the independent appellate authority, the State Information Commission. The pressure mounted over time as more and more users of RTI started seeking information inconvenient to public authorities, disturbing their established “work culture”. The feel good factor turned to souring of relations and soon the public authorities became defensive and reactive.
This led to the dilution of the commitment in the implementation of the RTI Act as senior officers started relinquishing the responsibilities as PIOs and FAAs by delegating the responsibility to the junior officers down to the level of section officers and undersecretaries, thereby degrading the RTI implementation process. The main reasons for not being able to cope with the challenge was noncompliance of the mandate of maintaining the official records duly catalogued and indexed in a manner which would have facilitated the supply of requisite information in time, the mind-set of not revealing in-house secrets to outsiders and of course the fear of exposing the irregularities committed under the opaque regime. This set the new phase in the administration of RTI regime marked by tightening of the grip on both the demand and the supply sides of RTI management. The demand constrained was created by increasing threats, intimidation, assaults and killing of RTI activists. RTI activists seeking public interest disclosures are socially boycotted, mocked, abused and serially threatened. Two decades on, the brutal reality of RTI implementation is that more than 100 RTI activists have been killed in the country, 187 assaulted, 191 harassed or threatened. These are the figures which are reported in the national dailies based on the report of crime record bureaus. There must be many more such cases which go unrecorded and reported. For example, 4 RTI activists killed by criminals in Uttarakhand do not find mention in any report and are not known to the people even in Dehradun. This was evident from the RTI debates conducted by the RTI Club in the Universities and colleges where the students highlighted killing of RTI activists in Bihar, Maharashtra, etc., but not in Uttarakhand. For the sake of record, it would be appropriate to mention here the names of RTI martyrs of Uttarakhand who were murdered for exposing corruption in the state. They are (1) the late Jagdish Prasad Chauhan of Ferupur Village Haridwar on 14-02-2012, (2) the late Raj Kumar Raheja of Karanpur village, Kashipur on 12-08-2013, (3) the late Gajpal Singh of Kandola village, Pauri on 8-08-2014, and (4) the late advocate Rajesh Suri of Dehradun on 30-11-2014.
Section 27 of RTI Act authorises the appropriate governments to make rules to carry out the provisions of the Act. But the rule making power of the state governments is limited largely to fixing of the fee for seeking information and prescribing the procedure for hearing and deciding appeals by the information commissions. The Uttarakhand government while exercising its rules making power, notified the new Rules in 2012 which totally distorted the whole process of seeking and supplying information under the Act. The four page rules prescribed initially in 2005 were expanded to 15 pages of guidelines making the procedure cumbersome and difficult to carry out the provisions of the Act. It created the stalemate in the implementation of RTI because State Information Commissioners resolved not to adopt the new rules prescribed by the state government which were against the very spirit of the Act. It took one full year of intense lobbying by the Uttarakhand RTI Club and the State Information Commission, including judicial intervention to get the Rules amended in 2013 to restore implementation process. It is not that this type of antipathy towards RTI Act is prevalent in Uttarakhand only. The situation in other states is much worse.
A study conducted by Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative shows that against the notional Rs 10 application fee charged by the central government and 24 state governments, Arunachal Pradesh charges a whopping Rs 500 application fee for information related to tenders, bids, quotations or business contracts and Rs 50 for other information. Sikkim charges Rs 100, Haryana, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh Rs 50, and Odisha, Maharashtra and Gujarat charge Rs 20 application fee for seeking information. Similarly, while the central government and 23 state governments do not charge any fee for filing first appeal, some state governments namely Sikkim, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh charge Rs 100, each, Odisha Rs25 and Maharashtra Rs 20. Then there are States where State Information Commissions are virtually defunct and states where pendency of second appeals has mounted so much that it will take years for the appellants to get their chance of hearing. This situation has arisen mainly because the Information Commissions are grossly understaffed due to administrative neglect. In Uttarakhand also the State Information Commission could not function for months for want of the requisite Information Commissioners two times during the last five years. The state of apathy is such that the activists are forced to file public interest litigations in the courts to get the vacancies filled in the Information Commissions. In 2023, advocate Anjali Bharadwaj had to file PIL in the Supreme Court seeking filling up of 8 vacancies out of 11 sanctioned posts in the Central Information Commission, which were lying vacant for a long time. As a result, the pendency of second appeals had risen from 3134 on 1 November 2023 to 20,437 on 1 December 2024. When responses are delayed for years the right becomes illusory. By 2024-`25, appeals and complaints pending across states and central information commission have reportedly soared in to hundreds of thousands.
Legislative amendment is another pet tactic of bureaucrats` and politicians to get rid of the inconvenient RTI queries. The first unsuccessful attempt to weaken the grip of RTI was made early in 2006 when ‘opinion’ and ‘advice’, read file notes, were sought to be excluded from the definition of information. Under the bureaucratic pressure the cabinet had decided to remove file notes as an item of information but due to strong resistance from the civil society organisations, the cabinet decision was not notified. The political class too has not been happy with the way the RTI Act became a potential tool in the hands of citizens to demand accountability from public authorities. In 2010, RTI activists Anil Bairwal and Subhash Chandra Agrawal had separately sought information from some political parties about the donations received by them. Barring CPI, all other parties responded saying that they did not come under the purview of RTI Act and hence they were not obliged to provide the requisite information. The duo filed appeals with the Central Information Commission against the denial of information which resulted in the landmark ruling of the CIC in 2013 declaring that the political parties fall under the ambit of the RTI Act because formation and operation of the political parties is regulated by the Election Commission which is a public authority. Besides the political parties are also substantially financed directly and indirectly by the government it said. This raised a storm in the political circles creating an awkward situation in which the lawmakers themselves opposed the idea of being governed by the law made by them. In view of the strident opposition of political parties the government decided to amend the RTI Act to keep political parties out of its purview stating that any association or body of individuals registered or recognised as political party under the Representation of the Peoples Act 1951 shall not be treated as Public Authority as defined under section 2(h) of the RTI Act 2005.
The political class was not satisfied with this liberty from RTI. In a discussion in the Rajya Sabha in 2016, some members asked if the government would consider amending RTI Act since it was passed in a hurry in 2005 and is being misused by citizens who with no locus standi (Paanwala, Chaiwala) end up asking the government questions about the country`s missile system or international relations. It was also said that RTI was preventing the officials from taking decisions and some RTI activists have made it a business. Some MPs while venting ire against RTI Act reportedly went to the extent of suggesting that the Act was passed under US pressure. No wonder that the government effected a major degrading amendment in 2019 in the RTI Act. With this amendment, the central government downgraded the status of the Chief Information Commissioners and Information Commissioners and gained discretion to determine the tenure, salaries and conditions of service of the central and state information commissioners thus diminishing their autonomy and increasing potential executive interference.
More recently, the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act 2023 stealthily dilutes the core of the RTI Act. Earlier, the RTI Act empowered citizens to access information about public official`s credentials, assets and conduct if public interest so warranted. The DPDP Act has amended some overlapping provisions especially section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act in a way that broadens exemptions under the cover of personal data. The new Act creates a blanket exemption for personal information without an overriding public interest test even if the person is known to be corrupt. DPDP Act imposes fines up to Rs 250 crores for wrongful disclosure of personal data. The fear of such harsh penalties will deter any PIO or appellate authority to disclose requisite personal information of the erring person. The RTI Act is based on the principle that, in democracy, the government holds information as a custodian and all information by default belongs to citizens. The DPDP Act weakens this premise by giving primacy to data protection and privacy often overriding transparency. It thus undermines the basic democratic principle of the rule of the people. It is unfortunate that the dilution of RTI Act through legislatively amendments is being effected at a time when we pride ourselves to be living in new India and when the country is aspiring to be a developed nation by 2047. One of the indicators of a developed society is good governance, free of corruption and characterised by equality, transparency and accountability. Our ranking in the Transparency International`s corruption index last year was 96 against previous year`s 93. This shows that we are moving in the opposite direction.
The two decades of RTI Act presents a story of both promise and challenge. Originally the law was transformative. It empowered citizens to access information about working of the state, strengthened accountability and opened the governance. But over time, this promise has been undermined by institutional neglect and legislative dilution. Yet all is not lost. The basic structure is intact. What is needed is a renewed commitment both in law and practice.
(The writer is President, RTI Club, Uttarakhand. Views expressed are personal)
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