All states now under the right to know

The biggest difference between the the Right to Information Bill passed today by the Lok Sabha from the one that was introduced five months ...

The biggest difference between the the Right to Information Bill passed today by the Lok Sabha from the one that was introduced five months ago is that it applies to state Governments as well.

The Bill will have to be passed by the Rajya Sabha and obtain the President’s assent before the clock starts ticking for the Central and state Governments to put in place within 120 days the entire machinery meant to implement the law.

Significantly, the amendment extending the Bill to state Governments and local bodies was made in the teeth of an adverse opinion given by the Law Ministry. It marks a victory for the National Advisory Council and NGOs who have been campaigning for the right to information to be available across the country at all levels.

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Another major amendment the NGOs seem to have brought about in the Bill relates to the extent to which security and intelligence agencies would be accountable under it. The Bill originally said that those agencies would only have to give information pertaining to corruption allegations. Today’s amendment requires them to give information on human rights violations as well.

But for all such concessions, the bureaucracy extracted its pound of flesh. One of the amendments that has diluted the original Bill stipulates that all official documents related to an event or a matter would be put in the public domain only after 20 years. The Bill originally said that such a disclosure would have to be made after 10 years.

In another change, the criminal liability of the designated public information officers (PIOs) has been limited to a fine of Rs 25,000. The provision imposing the liability of imprisonment up to five years has been deleted.

Since the penalties have been drastically reduced, the amended Bill empowers the independent information commission to decide the complaints against PIOs and impose fines. The possible violations for which the PIOs would be so punished have also been defined more precisely.

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The amendments have enhanced the status of Chief Information Commissioner to that of the Chief Election Commissioner and status of Central Information Commissioners to that of Election Commissioners.

In the hectic give-and-take that went on over the right to information Bill, the bureaucracy has had to forfeit its monopoly over such plum posts that will be created in the information commissions at the Centre and states. The Bill in its earlier form said those office holders shall be eminent persons from the field of ‘‘administration and governance.’’ The amendments have cast the net wider by including eminent persons from the fields of law, science and technology, social service, management, journalism and mass media.