Yet another move to dilute RTI
The Lok Sabha on Monday passed the Right to Information (Amendment) Bill, 2019. The Bill seeks to empower the government to fix salaries, tenure and other terms and conditions of employment of the information commissioners. Although the government has said that the Bill will not will impact the effectiveness of the RTI, opposition parties and activists feel it will curb the functioning of the information commissioners.
They have quite rightly pointed out that the Bill seeks to take away the independence of the information commissioners as they will be treated like any other government official, whose tenure and postings are decided by the government in power. With the threat of their tenures being cut short at any time, the commissioners will not be able to function freely.
The RTI empowers common citizens to seek information about the government’s functioning and the decisions it takes, bringing in transparency thereby. In the 14 years of the RTI’s existence, several attempts have been made to fetter the law. But each time they have come a cropper after persistent campaigns by activists. Of late, there is a persistent attempt to stone-wall information on one flimsy ground or the other, reducing the law’s effectiveness.
Quite often government departments also share incomplete information with RTI applicants. Once an application is rejected, an appeal can be filed, which goes to a senior officer. But such appeals can take up to five years to be decided. All these perhaps have discouraged citizens from filing RTIs. In a report released in March last year, the Central Information Commission revealed that there was a 6% fall in RTI applications between 2015-16 and 2016-17.
There have already been accusations of the Centre passing Bills in haste without adequate debate or thorough scrutiny by Parliamentary panels. With the RTI Bill set to be debated in the Rajya Sabha—where the NDA is short of a majority by a handful of seats—one hopes the Centre agrees to demands that a Standing Committee vets the recent changes.