The much-awaited Right To Information Bill 2004 supposedly to replace the impugned Freedom of Information Act 2002 is now under the dispensation of a Parliamentary Standing Committee. Meanwhile the said Committee acting under a routine convention sought the public response to the Bill. But moot question still remains: whether the proposed Bill fulfils the mandate of CMP of UPA Government to make the transparency law ‘more progressive, meaningful and participatory’? A quick look at its provisions may bring home the truth.
While the FOI Act applies to both Centre and States, the current Bill has retrogressively limited its scope to the Centre only. Except the 9 States where some form of RTI law exists, the rest of India shall be left without anything of the sort.
The Bill prescribes a 3-phase fee payable by an applicant for information. First, an application fee under Section 6(1). Second, under 7(1) the Public Information Officer is required to collect the fee at the time of providing the information. Third, under 7(5), a further fee if required for processing the information in printed or electronic form. Besides if an application is rejected on this or that ground, no provision exists for returning the application fee deposited earlier, rendering the applicant thereby a double loser. A multi-fee regime is not only harmful to the poor citizen, but also to the public offices where the additionally required paper works shall further worsen the prevailing scenario of misfeasance. Given the potential differences in the reprographic costs from area to area, a fee needn’t be fixed centrally from above at a flat rate for the whole country, but be left to every public authority to determine basing on the local market just to recover the cost of production.
The provision under 7(2) that ‘deems’ the lingering non-responsiveness of the PIO as the rejection of the application is blatantly unfair and shall only encourage laxity among the PIOs Of course, under 7(8), PIO is supposed to inform the grounds for rejection, but there being no time-limit, the PIO shall tend to delay and avoid any reply altogether.
The Section 3 prescribes only ‘the citizens’ as eligible to apply for information. But given the vicarious disposition of the bulk of our civil servants, a PIO may just harass any person by way of asking him for producing the proof of citizenship before entertaining his application. Moreover, there is no plausible reason as to why the persons living in India for study or work but not yet its citizens be denied official information.
The Bill has no provision for an acknowledgment receipt to be issued by the PIO to the applicant on receiving his/her application. As of now, no public office in India has an obligatory system in place for acknowledging the receipt of a petition. As a result, much time and energy is simply wasted away to trace out whether a particular application was received, diarised and put up for consideration. The RTI Bill can make a big difference to such unseemly scenario by incorporating a provision for the acknowledgement receipt under its Section 6. Like the copy of an FIR from a Police Station, an acknowledgement receipt shall enable the applicant to chase the PIO to ensure timely delivery of the requested information and also to lodge, if need be, a well-documented complaint before the appellate authorities against a non-cooperative PIO.
An independent appellate authority such as the Central Information Commission is doubtless a welcome innovation, but its unique rationale is simply nullified by the Bill’s other provision (Section 17) that the Commission having no penal authority itself shall refer the proven case of an errant PIO to a Government official, who shall in turn lodge it before a Judicial Magistrate First-Class, and the latter on adjudication may or may not punish the accused PIO. With such round-about procedure in place, no errant official can ever be timely penalised. Again, when the said Courts are already overloaded with staggering backlogs, why burden them afresh with RTI cases?
That the Bill purports to bury the obnoxious, colonial Official Secrets Act is a myth. The Act, so goes Section 19, ‘shall have effect notwithstanding anything inconsistent therewith contained in the Official Secrets Act 1923, and any other law for the time being in force or in any instrument’. It plainly means that the OSA along with such anti-transparency instruments as Services Rules and Manual of Office Procedure are here to stay, but their co-existence with RTI shall open up an endless spate of vexatious litigations around the spacious expression ‘inconsistent’. A transparency law worth the name demands that the anachronistic OSA along-with other laws and instruments of governance be scrapped wholesale and forthwith.
The Section 21 allows only one exceptional ground i.e. corruption, for somebody to apply for information from 18 nos. of country’s security and intelligence agencies otherwise excluded from the Act’s purview. But do the personnel serving these ‘holy cows’ not get often implicated in the murky episodes of human rights violation besides corruption? Moreover, doesn’t the Bill itself prize the cause of human rights when its Section 7(1) dictates the information concerning a person’s life and liberty to be provided by the public authorities within 48 hours instead of the routine 30 days? So besides corruption the Bill should specify the grounds of human rights violation as the second exception under which the otherwise immune agencies shall be compelled to inform. .
The Section 1(3) promises the Act’s enforcement on the 120th day of its enactment. So far, so good. But can an Act be enforced until the Rules are notified? The Section 24 empowers the Central Government to frame the Rules but prescribes no time-limit. Similarly, the Section 26 provides for the Parliament to approve the Rules so made, but again prescribes no time-limit. All these 3 Sections need be harmonised, lest the hyperbole about the 120th day turns into a big hoax.
Ironical though, in our democracy the Ministers who are simultaneously front-ranking legislators and heads of the various administrative departments do however swear by an Oath of Secrecy codified under 3rd Schedule of Constitution. But the RTI Bill, says its preamble, seeks ‘to promote transparency and accountability in the working of every public authority’. Are the Ministers not public authorities of first order? The Oath of Secrecy and RTI being polar opposites, the Bill’s Statement of Objects and Reasons should therefore hold out a firm resolve to abolish soon the useless Oath of Secrecy along with eventual elimination of all anti-transparency laws and instruments from the statute book.