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Say no to RTI amendments

Central Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi recently took the extraordinary step of unilaterally releasing the minutes of the October 14, 2009 meeting between Union Minister Prithviraj Chavan and Central and State Information Commissioners on a proposal to significantly amend the Right to Information Act, 2005. The meeting's importance lay in the fact that it saw the hopeless isolation of the government side (Department of Personnel and Training, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances, and Training) on the proposed amendments. Of the 60 Information Commissioners who attended, all but two were opposed to the idea of tinkering with the historic legislation. What explains such unity of resolve? The DoPT's package contained two ‘killer' amendments. The first would include under Section 8 (which specifies exemptions to the Act) applications deemed to be “frivolous and vexatious.” The second would bar from the Act's purview any discussion leading up to an official decision. The best judge of whether or not an application is “frivolous and vexatious” is the Information Commissioner who is called upon to decide the issue. In the four-and-a-half years since the Act came into force, no information officer has complained of being overburdened by such applications. Nor is there anything to suggest that government functioning is hampered by the disclosure of official discussions (previously known as file notings) and records of process. The only reasonable conclusion is that both the bureaucracy and the political government fear transparency of process because it will expose wrongdoing.

In recent days, RTI queries relating to public spending, governance, distribution of largesse, and even the procedure adopted for deciding awards have proved to be deeply embarrassing for the government. The ghost of RTI amendments has returned – in the controversial form of exemption for the office of the Chief Justice of India. The irony is too glaring to miss. It was the Supreme Court that laid the ground for opening up acts of governance to public scrutiny. In the 1975 State of U.P. vs Raj Narain case, the court said: “In a government of responsibility like ours, where all the agents of the public must be responsible for their conduct, there can be but few secrets. The people of this country have a right to know every public act, everything that is done in a public way, by their functionaries…” The RTI Act has empowered the ordinary citizen in a way its architects did not anticipate. Studies have shown its growing appeal across all social strata, which is surely why the government is set on blunting this powerful tool in the hands of the people. Such obscurantism must be seen through and defeated.

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