oppn parties The Amendments Being Made To The RTI Act Will Kill It

News Snippets

  • SP drops two candidates owing allegiance to Azam Khan from Rampur and Moradabad
  • In Assam, a controversy erupted after a picture of UPPL leader Benjamin Basumatary, lying on a stack of Rs 500 notes circulated on social media. UPPL is an ally of the BJP
  • AAP's Jalandhar-West MP Sushil Kumar Rinku joins the BJP. He was the only AAP Lok Sabha MP
  • Supreme Court dismisses Centre's plea to review its 2023 verdict in the PMLA case
  • Close save for passengers as they remain unhurt after the wings of two planes graze at Kolkata airport. Pilots derostered and inquiry ordered by DGCA
  • Bengal BJP leader Dilip Ghosh gets notice from the EC as well as the BJP for making ugly remarks about Mamata Banerjee's parentage
  • Sadanand Vasanth Date, who faught terrorists in the 26/11 attack and was awarded the Preisent's Police medal, has been appointed the head of the NIA
  • Centre will borrow Rs 7.5L cr in the first six months of FY25, nearly 50% of the target for the full year
  • 25 stocks, including SBI, will see same day trade settlements from today in the world's fastest settlement mode in both BSE and NSE
  • Stocks recover smartly on Wednesday: Sensex rises 526 points to 72996 and Nifty 118 points to 22123
  • Tennis: Rohan Bopanna-Matthew Ebden reached the semifinals of the Miami Open
  • IPL: records tumble as SRH beat MI in a high-scoring match. SRH score 277/3 with 18 sixes and Mumbai score 246 with 20 sixes to fall short by 31 runs. Atotal of 38 sixes, highest in an IPL match were hit and both teams combined to score 523 runs, the highest aggregate in an IPL match
  • Amul will launch fresh milk in the US
  • IPL: RCB beat Punjab by 4 wickets as Kohli and Karthik shine with the bat
  • India strongly objected to German foreign office remarks over the arrest of delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, called it "biased assumptions"
Delhi Lt Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena says government cannot be run from jail, hints at President's Rule in the capital ////// In a dangerous incident, the wings of two planes grazed while taxiing on the runway at Kolkata airport, all passengers were safe but DGCA ordered an inquiry and the pilots were derostered
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The Amendments Being Made To The RTI Act Will Kill It

By Sunil Garodia

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.

The Right to Information (RTI) Act was necessitated because decisions in government departments were often arbitrary and illogical and they were hidden from public scrutiny as officers chose not to dispense information by hiding behind a plethora of red tape. If the RTI Act was followed in its true spirit by bureaucrats in the government departments, there would be no need of information commissioners (IC). But the legislature knew that despite the RTI Act, bureaucrats would harass the public and refuse to dispense information. Hence, the office of the IC was created, with fixed tenure to guarantee autonomy. The salaries and other terms were also at par with election commissioners, giving them a lot of freedom and power, as it should be.

But the NDA government has now sought to amend these provisions to weaken the RTI Act. It seeks to do away with the fixed tenure of ICs and lower their status by fixing their salary and other terms as per its wish. It would immediately downgrade the office of the IC and make them dependant on the whims of those in power. That is the first step to bring them in line, so to say. They would henceforth be expected to toe the government line if they wish to remain in service.

The government is playing into the hands of the bureaucracy by clipping the wings of the ICs and weakening the RTI Act. The very purpose of the Act would be defeated if the ICs do not have the power and the freedom to direct bureaucrats to part with the information demanded by citizens. Most ICs will now think twice before passing orders that are likely to antagonize the ruling dispensation as it could bring the axe upon them. That, in effect, would sound the death knell of the RTI Act.

Every year, first appeals on denial of information for application to Central government departments have been increasing. In such a situation, the hands of the ICs should have been strengthened. But the government, under the guise of streamlining and strengthening the Act, is actually making it weak and ineffective. Like all ruling dispensations, the NDA also thinks that the public has no business to know the whys and hows of governance and that the government is not accountable to its citizens. If that be so, we might as well scrap the RTI Act.