RTI Act under siege, may slow down fight against graft

The last part of the series analyses the difficulties of amending the RT I Act

With almost 6 million RT I applications filed every year, India’ s Right to Information Act is the world’ s most extensively used transparency legislation. However, the government’ s proposed amendments to the RT I Act threaten the very foundations of this empowering law.

Attempt to dilute the Act

In April 2017 the government put out a set of Draft Rules proposing amendments to the RTI Act. They include permitting the withdrawal of appeals based on a written communication by the appellant and the closure of an RTI query upon the death of the appellant. This means information seekers could be browbeaten into withdrawing applications. Also, if the death of an appellant leads to the automatic closure of the RTI query, information seekers and whistleblowers will be even more vulnerable to assault than they already are.

Another proposed amendment allows central and state governments to fix the salaries of the Information Commissioners (IC), which have so far been on a par with those of the officials of the Election Commission .“If the government decides the salaries of I Cs the independence of the commissions could be compromised ,” says Anjali Bhardwaj of Sat ark Na garik San ga than( S NS ), a citizen rights body based in Delhi.

Information delayed, information denied

A March 2018 study on the efficiency of India’ s State Information Commissions conducted by SN Sand the Centre for Equity Studies( C ES) gives insights into the problems that be set the RT I mechanism. The Act lays down that an RTI query is to be replied to within 30 days of its receipt by the IC. However, the study found that if a query were to be filed in West Bengal today, it would be addressed only in 43 years! RT I campaign er Ami ta va Choudhu ry filed an RT I application in 2008 seeking information onappointments under the West Ben gal College Service Commission. When he did not get a reply, he filed a complaint in 2009. That complaint was heard only this year. He’ s still awaiting the information he’ d asked for.

Ma hit i Ad hikarGuja rat P ah el, which operate san RT I help line in Gujarat, estimates that barely three out of 10 queries they help citizens file get a reply within the stipulated 30 days. “There st go into first and second appeals. In many cases, the delay in receiving information makes it impossible to effectively address the issue ,” says MAGP’s PanktiJog. Adds Am rita J oh rio fR oz iRo ti Adhikar Abhiyan, a network of organisations in Delhi which work in the field of food security ,“We come across dozens of people suffering because of the delay in receiving information under the RT I law .”

Non-implementation of suo motu disclosure

Many of the RT I applications, especially those related to government social security entitlements, need not have been filed at all had the public authorities disclosed the inform at ionsuomotu as stipulated under Section Four of the RT I Act. As Bhardwaj points out ,“As many as 70 percent of the RT I applications relate to information that should have been pro actively provided under Section 4 of the RT I Act .”

35 percent rejection of RT I applications

Often, RT I queries are rejected on the grounds that the information, if revealed, could en danger national security, personal privacy, copyright and other such rights listed under Sections eight, nine ,11 and 24 of the law. However, in its annual report of 2016-17, the Central Information Commission states that 35 percent of applications were rejected for reasons listed under‘ others ’.“Given that the other reasons listed en compass all the limitations to information as laid down by the law, one can only wonder why 35 percent of the RT I applications were rejected ,” says Johri.

Man power crunch

Delayed appointments to the State Information Commissions is one of the biggest reasons for the high pen den cy rates of RTI queries. The SNS-CES study found that the State Information Commissions of Maharashtra, Na ga land and Gujarat were functioning without a Chief Information Commissioner during the period of the study .“SIC sin Kerala and O dish a were working without their full quota of commissioners ,” says Jo hri .“This means that people seeking information from public authorities have little re course to the independent appellate mechanism if their right to information is violated”

Activists also question the practice of appointing retired bureaucrats as Information Commissioners .“In West Bengal, forexample, the State Chief Information Commissioner retired as chief secretary of the state ,” says Amitava Choudhury. “Can they, with their close ties to the bureaucracy, be impartial?”

Activists believe that the problems can easily be solved if there is the political will to do so. Till then, India’ s campaign against corruption could slow down to a crawl.