The Hindu : New Delhi News : "File notings can encourage officers to be forthright"

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Oct 08, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

"File notings can encourage officers to be forthright"

Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: Chairperson of the Delhi Government's Public Grievance Commission (PGC), Shailaja Chandra, speaking at a workshop on implementation of the Right To Information Act, 2005, at the Indian Law Institute (ILI) here on Friday, said that in her experience as a former bureaucrat, around 85 per cent of file notings can, and should be made available to the public under the RTI Act.

However, she said that around 15 per cent of the cases were very sensitive, and it was not always in public interest to disclose these file notings.

Ms Chandra said that there were instances where Government officers write very strongly and then get overruled. She said that in such cases file notings would encourage officers to be forthright.

Calling the RTI Act, "the Act of the Century", the Secretary, Ministry of Law and Justice, Legislative Department, T.K. Vishwanathan, said it was one of the most important legislations enacted by the Government.

Calling for the Government to enact a separate law on personal data protection, Rodney Ryder, a lawyer specialising in commercial law, said the RTI Act is incomplete without a law providing for data privacy.

According to the website of the Central Department of Personnel and Training, the nodal ministry for the implementation of the RTI Act, file notings are excluded from the ambit of the RTI Act.

But civil society organisations say that interpreting the RTI Act to exclude file notings would defeat the legislative intent of the RTI Act.

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