Activists fear move to curtail CICs power

Activists have objected to a daylong session of State Information Commissioners called on Wednesday by the Department of Personnel and Training....

Activists have objected to a daylong session of State Information Commissioners called on Wednesday by the Department of Personnel and Training DoPT,as they fear the issues on the agenda are precursors for amendments the Centre,or more specifically the bureaucracy,wants made to the Right to Information Act.

While the bureaucracy calls the changes technical,RTI activists call it an attempt to resist the new culture of transparency in government. With Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah headed for an assignment in Jammu and Kashmir,there are fears that the meeting on Wednesday is meant to create ground for amendments before his successor takes charge. At the heart of the argument is who will interpret the Act,the Central Information Commission or the government? explained Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi.

Speaking from Bhilwara,pioneer RTI activist and former member of the National Advisory Council Aruna Roy said: What needs to be done is not to amend but to implement the Act properly. Most of these amendments are being planned to curtail the spirit of the RTI. The proposed amendment on introducing a clause to weed out vexatious and frivolous applications is fraught with danger.

The other point of concern is over the allocation of work amongst Information Commissioners by the CIC. In order to reduce load,the CIC had,in the first year of the Act,allowed each commissioner to hold separate hearings and decide on pendency. However,many in the DoPT then thought it was not in the CICs powers to allocate work in this fashion.

Activists,who apprehend a move to limit the CICs powers to interpret the Act, said they would be watching the meeting also to gauge the mood in the government and bureaucracy. There are always people who try and trivialise laws. That doesnt mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater and restrict the scope of RTI, said Gandhi.

However,sources in the DoPT said fears of amendments that would restrict the scope of RTI are unfounded. They admitted that this might have stemmed from a May 22 circular on the CICs decision to allow separate and single-member benches to hear cases. The matter has been examined in consultation with the Department of Legal Affairs,which has pointed out that the Central Information Commission or the State Information Commissions could function through benches only if there was such a specific provision in the Act, the circular had said.

DoPT officials clarified that they want to amend the Act to allow setting up of separate benches and not to disallow it. They said that through the proposed amendments they were actually looking to broaden the scope of the Act by reducing the number of exempt agencies.