Some significant modifications are required in the 12-year old RTI Act to make it more effective and fruitful
Subhash Chandra Agrawal
The Right-to-Information (RTI) Act, introduced in 2005, is one of the legislations that bypassed all other Acts in terms of popularity. It is ranked as fourth best transparency Act in the world. This is why all our neighbouring countries took the Indian RTI Act as role-model for drafting their respective transparency Acts. But the 12-years experience with the RTI Act shows that some significant modifications are required in the rules. These changes may be incorporated without any amendment bill.
Checking Applicants
The number of RTI applications can be reduced to roughly half if there is complete compliance of the Section 4(1)(b) of the RTI Act regarding suo-moto disclosure of certain
information on website. The reduction figure can cross 70 per cent if some parameters are added to this Section. But most public-authorities have been unable for a full compliance of this important section. According to some officers, this Section is not fully complied because of complexity and too many parameters of the information required to be put on the website. Since RTI is an additional task for most public-authorities, officers even though desiring to comply with the provisions, yet have to defer working for compliance to next day which practically never comes. Practical solution is gradual implementation in phases to be completed in a time-bound period
with motivation for early compliance and adverse remarks on ACRs of concerned officers for poor compliance.
The details of individual medical reimbursements and travel-expenses at the cost of public-exchequer must be compulsorily put on websites of respective public-authorities as deterrent against misuse. One MLA claimed medical reimbursement of his mother, while the mother had earlier claimed the same according to her own entitlements. MLAs are there who have claimed medical reimbursement in tune of several crores of rupees.
Third-Party Audit of Public-Authorities
Presently, public-authorities are not getting third-party audit done in respect of their websites because of non-clarity about auditors and their fees. Some auditors are charging largely disproportionate, which cannot be practically possible for state- government in respect of all the public-authorities under them. Known experts including former Information Commissioners should be officially named on DoPT website with fees reasonably prescribed in some thousands of rupees according to average man-hours spent on audit.
Website of Central Information Commission (CIC) should be an ideal one to be followed by others in all respects. It should also incorporate a portal on lines of www.pgportal.gov.in where both suggestions and grievances not only relating to CIC but also in respect of RTI Act may be posted with registration-number awarded for each posted submission. Time-bound resolution of each submission should be e-mailed to person/s having
posted the submission/s rather than sending SMS-alert to search web-portal for resolution. It should also feature regularly-updated subject-wise compilation of all DoPT circulars on RTI. One such compilation was put on DoPT website way back in the year 2013.
Verdicts on Websites
Both DoPT and CIC websites should incorporate all RTI-related verdicts of Supreme Court and High Courts according to subjects and sections of the RTI Act to be an important ready-reckoner for Commissioners, public-authorities and RTI users. Litigation will also reduce considerably when verdicts from Information Commissioners will be incorporating relevant court-verdicts easily available section-wise from CIC-website. To effectively check misuse of RTI act, CIC-verdicts on misuse of RTI Act should also be listed under a distinct field on CIC-website. CIC-website can also feature some important CIC-verdicts. CIC-website should also list all pending cases at Supreme Court and various High Courts regarding CIC-verdicts also mentioning respective dates of institution of case and present status including next date of hearing.
The Biggest Obstacle
There are numerous cases not only in High Courts (mainly Delhi High Court) but also in Supreme Court where cases filed against CIC-verdicts have been lying stayed for long years with repeated adjournments. This is despite the fact that many Division Benches of Supreme Court have repeatedly been observing ex-party stay-orders followed by frequent adjournments being the biggest weakness of our Justice-Delivery-System further making remarks that it is quite often that parties initially seek ex-party
stay-orders and then take regular adjournments and at times even ultimately lose the case. Only recently Supreme Court sue-motto decided to make all Collegium-proceedings public on website. Earlier, Supreme Court judges had decided to make their wealth public on website. Then there remains no sense in any stay on CIC-verdicts allowing information on these aspects, putting a big question-mark on relevance of stay-order dated 24.11.2009 on various CIC-verdicts etc in SLP(C) numbers 32855 & 32856 of 2009. Chief Central Information Commissioner can and must take up such issues with Chief Justice of India so that a system may be evolved wherein cases challenging CIC-
verdicts may get short and limited adjournments to be decided in shortest time of say maximum one year at any stage. The CIC can provide proper legal assistance to concerned RTI applicants for expediting such cases at Supreme Court. Otherwise also there should be a provision of providing free legal assistance to RTI applicants
where public-authorities challenge CIC- verdicts at courts. Such a little expenditure will not disturb Commission’s mega-budget allowing every type of mega-expense easily.
Accept RTI Applications at all Post-Offices
Indian postal-department presently provides facility of receiving post-free RTI applications addressed to central public-authorities at just about 4500 post-offices out of about 1,60,000 post-offices in the country. This facility cab be made available at all post-offices.
Introduce RTI Stamps
CIC’s repeated recommendations for introducing exclusive RTI stamps in denominations of Rs 2, 10 and 50 on lines of erstwhile Radio and TV licence-fees stamps should be
implemented. Presently, most popular mode of remitting RTI fees through postal-orders costs heavily to public-exchequer with handling cost of more than forty rupees. There is additional cost on banking-system for clearing-operations involved to get these postal-orders encashed. Moreover, it is significant that in view of postal-orders in denominations of less than rupees 10 including of rupees two have been discontinued, RTI applicants have no other mode of payment of copying-charges in fractions of rupees ten other than cash for which applicants may have to spend much more both in terms of money and man-hours to approach public-authority for deposit of copying-charges.
Identity of RTI Applicants
Misuse of filing RTI petitions in name of others or with non-existing persons has become quite common. Copy of ID proof must be made compulsory to be attached with every RTI petition. It is also otherwise necessary because RTI Act does not permit those
ex-Indians who later took nationality of some other country. Baseless arguments are being given against the suggestion that it would disclose identity of the RTI applicants!
Fix Uniform RTI Fees at Rs 50
RTI fees should be uniformly fixed at Rs 50 with provision to provide first 20 copied pages free-of-cost. It will, in fact, turn to be economical in terms of man-hours spent postal-charges for both the public-authorities and genuine RTI applicants and in demanding and remitting copying-charges.
Regular RTI Workshops
Some public-authorities are in the habit of misusing section 6(3) of the RTI Act by unnecessarily transferring RTI
petitions to hundred/thousand offices even though information might exist with the transferring public-authority itself, mainly for purpose of evading tough queries. It may be that many departments/public-authorities might be doing so because of lack of RTI-
training. Regular RTI-workshops should be conducted for officers of various public-authorities so that they may not waste man-hours and resources by such large-scale transfer of a single RTI applications to hundreds/thousands of other public-authorities. DoPT should arrange massive training-programmes by experts for handling RTI petitions to avoid wastage of man-hours of public-authorities in handling RTI petitions of frivolous vexatious and
nuisance nature. Compilation of subject-wise DoPT circulars on RTI should be a regular feature as it was once done in the year 2013, with provision of auto-update each time on addition of a new circular. Lack of knowledge at all levels is also evident when very few dealing with RTI petitions are aware of 500-word limit in an RTI-petition imposed through
gazette-notification dated 31.07.2012.
Avoid Over Transparency
DoPT in 2014 required public- authorities to put on their websites, scanned copies of all the RTI applications received and their respective responses. Perhaps the motto might have been to reduce necessity of filing RTI applications with a view that prospective RTI applicant may get in information in form of scanned response of some earlier RTI applications on website. But it is
practically impossible to anticipate that the person would go through huge and large number of RTI applications in anticipation of getting desired information.
On the contrary, misusers filing RTI applications under fake names and incorrect addresses find opportunity to file first appeals to further harass public-authority even though
mailing-envelope having RTI response is received back ‘undelivered’ with postal-authorities making remark about name and address of addressee not traceable. Miscreant files first appeal by seeing the scanned RTI response put on website! Unnecessary spending of resources of public-authorities in scanning etc should be abolished on an aspect which mainly benefits miscreant elements misusing RTI Act.
Before the enactment of ‘Right to Information Act 2005’ at national level, Delhi got its own ‘Delhi Right to Information Act 2001’. Even after losing its relevance after enactment of the national Act, ‘Delhi Right to Information Act 2001’ is still in existence even though there may not be much users of this Act. The Delhi Act 2001’ should be repealed.
Pro-Active Disclosures
Central Chief Information Commission (CCIC), in an interview, indicated that CIC is deliberating on a mechanism
for pro-active disclosures by private entities involved in public-work. There are various bodies under
private-public-partnership (PPP), cooperative-sector, sports-bodies and others which even though declared public-authorities by Central Information Commission, evade the provision by getting stay-orders on CIC-verdicts from courts. Several division-benches of Supreme Court have repeatedly endorsed the bitter fact of ex-party stay-orders followed by regular adjournments to be a lacuna of our justice-delivery-system. Many aspects of day-to-day life like banking and telecommunications are presently
dominated by private sector with lot of malpractices to mint money. Even cooperative-giant IFFCO gifting
properties worth hundreds of crores to its office-bearers out of profits minted through annual fertiliser-subsidies worth tens of thousands of crores is not a public-authority under RTI Act.
Rather all PPPs, sports-bodies, cooperative-societies and other such bodies affecting lives of millions like IBPS should be directly under RTI Act to avoid chances of stay-orders on CIC-verdicts obtained after much efforts. RTI Act can also be considered to be applied on private companies having turnovers over some stipulated amount especially for those related to consumer products or services. For rest others provision of pro-active disclosures of certain basic information may be made compulsory on websites.
(The writer is an RTI specialist and Guinness World Record Holder for most letters in newspapers)
