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The Flip Side of the RTI Act

-Prabodh Sexena*

The AdministratorVol. L, June 2007, pp. 21-38

*The author is an IAS officer presently working as Director in the Department of Economic Affairs,Govt. of India.

Abstract

The show piece legislation of India namely the right to Information Act 2005 is in its 3rd year of operation and has received a fair shareof book age and brickbats. This article is examines the emergingtrends of usage of the law and finds the results to be not veryencouraging. He finds that the public interest which the Act intendsto secure is missing in a good number of applications. The applicationseek policy related information in very few numbers of cases .

The showpiece legislation of India, namely, the Right to Information Act, 2005(for Short, the RTI Act) is in its third year amid success stories, enthusiasm, hopeand, on the other extreme, protest and ridicule. Activists are demanding bloodbecause they think that, the Chief Information Commission (hereinafter, theCommission) lacks the necessary ‘killer instinct’ of ruthless compliance. Thepractitioners, however, are overwhelmed with the reach of the law and its looserecourse in purely personal issues.Readers may recall that in pursuance of international trend and domesticdemand, the Government of India had enacted the RTI Act which came into forceon 12 October 2005. The RTI Act prescribes mandatory disclosure of certaininformation to citizens within specified period and creates a legal-institutionalframework for setting out the practical regime of right to information for everycitizen to secure access to information under the control of Public Authority. It also

THE ADMINISTRATOR, VOL. L, JUNE 2007

lays down specific obligations on the appropriate governments, competentauthorities and public authorities, as defined therein. It sets up an information deliverymechanism through appointment of information providers in the public authoritiesand mandates the appointments of Information Commissioners to inquire intocomplaints, hear second appeals, and guide implementation of the RTI Act.The RTI Act says that the information can be obtained from Public Authority,which is defined under Section 2 (h) of the RTI Act.Under the RTI Act all constitutional, statutory bodies, bodies created bygovernment notifications and local self-government bodies are public authorities.In addition, bodies owned, controlled or substantially financed directly or indirectlyby government are public authorities.Finally non-Government organisations substantially financed by government arealso within the definition of public authorities.Section 22 of the RTI Act mandates that the provisions of the RTI Act , incase of conflict, overrides the Official Secrets Act, 1923, and any legal instrument.By inclusion of the word ‘instrument’, there is an obligation to bring all the rules,guidelines, manuals etc in conformity with the RTI Act.Access legislations, all over the world, have brought discomfiture to thepowers that be. The RTI Act has empowered the weak and the vulnerable. TheRTI Act has been an important tool in opening doors and discovering informationthat otherwise would have remained outside the public domain. It has helped touphold the spirit of openness, transparency and accountability in public life.Success stories are far too many. It was found out that Tony Blair, the thenPrime Minister of UK, had series of breakfast meetings with a Party donor beforea vaccine contract was awarded without bidding. US was compelled to disclosethat 558 men from 41 countries are in detention at Guantanamo Bay.The Indian experience is no different. It has given a billion people the rightenjoyed so far by few thousand legislators. The scandals of misuse of PDS rationhave corrected the systems in the exposed places. Ordinary citizens have been

able to secure long delayed pensions, house allotment letters and passports. It hasto be appreciated that the RTI Act is not a redress law but information culled outhas tremendous correcting influence.While threats of terrorism, real and perceived, have robbed the essentialstrength of access legislations in the western world, the problem in India is different.Though too early to say, yet the emerging trend of usage of the law is not exactlyvery happy. The public interest, which the RTI Act, intended to secure, is missingin good number of applications. It is in very few instances where requestors seek policy related information.

1. Emerging Areas of Concern

The Commission is at pains, in decision after decision, to explain that the RTI Actis not a mechanism to redress grievances. While sifting through the decisions givenby the Commission, it is impossible not to note that how vigorously the RTI Acthas become a tool in the hands of employees— mostly disgruntled, underdisciplinary proceedings and even dismissed. A disproportionately large numberof the appeals may be about or over fifty percent are from the employees, includingfrom IAS and other high-ranking officers.Undoubtedly the Indian law is the most ‘ambitious’ (some may prefer tocall it progressive or advanced) among the access legislations of the world, theclosest being the South African information law. The RTI Act prescribes noqualifications and reasons for asking information. In series of decisions, theCommission has ruled, and rightly so, that public .authorities cannot devise formsrestricting the right to seek information. In

Bishwajit Mohanty v Ministry Of Environment & Forest

, it struck down the format that restricted information in arequest to a specific period.Such a broad window is not available even in the developed countries,operating such laws for decades. Contrast this to US where the Government in1996 ,

owing to limited resources

(emphasis mine), recognizing that as requestsare very broad and complex, established procedure for the department to discusswith requesters ways of tailoring large requests and made corresponding amendment

THE FLIP SIDE OF THE RTI ACT

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mayankdewangan007

sir i am Mohan Lal Dewangan form Raipur Chhattisgrh doing MBA from Ishan Institute of mgt & tech. I have need of this document please give it to me because i am preparing my final project on Right to information Act 2005 & its impact. Please help me sir. My email id is smw_mohan@rediffmail.com

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