The RTI amendment bill 2019 will make the citizens COMMON again

The RTI amendment bill 2019 introduced by the Modi government in Parliament will make it very difficult for the ordinary citizen to get critical information. We would also never know how our political parties are run, and funded.

At the time of writing this article, Lok Sabha had already passed the RTI amendment bill. Now it is the turn of Rajya Sabha to accept or pass this bill. By the looks of it, this bill, which seeks to dilute the existing RTI Act, will be passed by the Upper House.

Background of RTI Act

How does this amendment affect the information flow from government to you and me? And why is it bad? Read on to get the answers.

In 2005, Parliament had passed the Right to Information Act so that common people could get the information that they wanted. But there were a few conditions attached to this Act.

1. Firstly, you needed to be an Indian citizen in order to get your information. Ok, no problem.

2. Second, you could ask only that information which was of public nature. For example, you could ask the total expenses on all the chai parties done by a particular ministry or a government department. But if you asked for this information from a private company, your request would be disallowed.

3. Third, you couldn’t ask for information that belonged to a private individual. Fair point. After all, how are you concerned about my take-home salary?

4. Finally, the RTI Act did not extend to critical and sensitive information like defense operations, deployment of the army, etc.

Thus, these four points made up the Right to Information Act. As said earlier, the purpose of this Act was to make the central and state governments accountable.

Fee and Appeals

And yes, you also needed to pay a small fee for your information- just Rs. 10.

But what if, some official declined to give you the information that you wanted?

Well, you could appeal against the decision and if you were still dissatisfied with the final outcome, you could go to a High Court or the Supreme Court. The judge could order the required department to give you the information.

The Information Commission

The RTI Act is enforced by a special body called the Information Commission. This body is made up by Information Commissioners and a Central Information Commissioner.

But is this body truly neutral?

Uptil now, yes because the tenure of these officers was fixed by the Parliament. So, at the time of his appointment, the CIC knew he would be in office for a definite number of years. Nobody- not even the government- could remove him unless the said office did something bad.

But was this Act effective? To a large extent yes.

Uptil now, more than 6 million citizens have filed Right to Information applications and got the information that they wanted. Many scams were unearthed this way and most of the time, public officials were on guard.

People could get details of meetings where bad decisions were taken. Based on these details, many concerned citizens approached the police and filed criminal complains against corrupt officers and ministers.

So why the RTI amendment bill?

Good question.

The simple answer is that your and my government now doesn’t want to give me information so easily.

And no, it isn’t changing the RTI act altogether. Rather, the Modi government is simply changing the terms of employment of the top officers of the Information Commission.

Until now, all the Information Officers in the topmost body are fairly independent because they can’t be removed abruptly by the government. These officers have fixed terms of appointment which cannot be changed abruptly. These terms were fixed by the Parliament.

This helps in the discharge of their duties because these officers know they can’t be sacked by the government. An independent Information Commissioner can even order any government minister to share the required information.

But this independence doesn’t help the government. Its crooked decisions can be exposed by an independent Central Information Commission.

Also, read- Parliament session may be extended this monsoon

This RTI amendment bill is meant to take this independence of the commissioners away.

In the proposed bill, it is the government that will decide the employment duration of these officers. Their term will no longer be fixed by the Parliament but will be defined by the government of the day.

Whats’s the real reason behind RTI amendment bill?

In 2013, the Central Information Commission decided that all the political parties like the BJP, TMC, Congress, CPI, CPM, etc come under the Right to Information Act. This was a pathbreaking judgment because per this order, you and I could now question and get answers from our political masters.

We could question them about their funding sources, financial information, etc and these political parties were obliged to give us the right answers.

The government refused to obey this CIC order and approached the Supreme Court asking it to reverse this decision. Since 2015, this issue is hanging in the top court and there has been no decision yet.

Now that Mr. Modi has more than 350 MPs supporting his government, he has decided to amend the RTI Act and force the Information Commissioners to follow his orders.

It seems the government is determined to hide something from the voters. And the opposition is supporting it.

What does this mean for the autonomy of the Central Information Commission?

Simply this, that the top officers will no longer have the courage to stand up to the government. Every commissioner will face an uncertain term and will not take tough decisions.

For example, once appointed, an information commissioner will always worry about the reaction of the government against his ‘tough’ decisions. Since this officer doesn’t have a fixed term, he will try to please the government of the day to protect his power and privileges. This officer won’t stand up to the government and demand answers.

You will realize that the RTI amendment bill is ultimately meant to protect corrupt netas and babus of the government.

Have the other political parties opposed this amendment bill?

Except for Congress, no other party has objected to this amendment. I am waiting for the Aam Admi Party’s reaction when this bill comes to Rajya Sabha.

AAP is one of the most vocal supporters of the Right to Information and I would be mighty surprised if this party supports this amendment. One of the reasons why this party came to power was its use of RTI as an agent of political change.

I still remember Arvind Kejriwal using this Act to bring out information on the corrupt deals of the Congress government.

But now things have changed drastically. Parties like AAP and the BJP would now never answer questions on their foreign funding thanks to this amendment.

Last word

And we, as citizens of the country, would never ever know whether we are being ruled by our own or by foreign sources. Indians need to know what’s happening within their political parties. We need to ensure that our political masters are 100 percent clean when it comes to financing. It is time we raised our voices and asked the Narendra Modi government to rollback this amendment.

I can understand the fear that no political party would like to expose its political strategy to outsiders. That’s a fair point. But the Parliament needs to respect the overall spirit of the Right to Information. Perhaps it would be a good idea to limit the scope of this amendment to finances and funding of the political parties.