Right to Information

 S. 5(4) of the RTI Act :

    Ss.4 of S. 5 of The RTI Act provides that the Public Information Officer may seek the assistance of any officer as he or she considers it necessary for the proper discharge of his or her duties.

    Rakesh Agarwal of New Delhi applied for inspection of certain records of Tis Hazari Court, New Delhi.

    In reply, the PIO stated that the appellant can inspect the records or take copies of the documents with the permission of Ld. Presiding Officer.

    The appellant objected to the condition put for inspection in an appeal to CIC.

    CIC, Shailesh Gandhi, in the Order noted as under :

    “The onus lies on the PIO to approach any officer of the court as he considers necessary to procure the information that the appellant is seeking. If the appellant is exercising his right to information under the RTI Act, then he is within his statutory rights to only approach persons designated as PIO or APIO. He is not expected to seek permission from persons who are not designated under the RTI Act. The purpose of putting in place S. 5(4) is to ensure that applicants for information do not have to run from pillar to post to access information to which they are rightfully entitled to under the RTI Act. In present case, to ask the appellant to apply for permission from the Presiding Officer of the Court is in clear contradiction to the spirit and word of the law. The Commission considers the PIO’s reply as an instance of shirking responsibility and takes strong exception to such actions.”

S. 28 of the RTI Act :

    S. 28 provides that the competent authority (the Chief Justice of all High Courts and Supreme Court are competent authorities u/s.2(e) of the RTI Act) may make rules to carry out the provisions of the RTI Act.

    The Delhi High Court (Right to Information) Rules, 2006 as amended include :

    The information specified in S. 8 of the Act shall not be disclosed and made available and in particular the following information shall not be disclosed :

    (a) Such information which relates to judicial functions and duties of the Court and matters incidental and ancillary thereto.

    CIC in his order noted as under for above rule :

    The Delhi High Court RTI Rules have been framed u/s.28 of the RTI Act. This provision clearly states that the competent authority may make rules to carry out the provisions of the Act. Therefore, rules framed by the High Court u/s.28 cannot run contrary to the fundamental basis of the RTI Act which is to ensure that citizens can enjoy their fundamental as well as statutory right to information. Rule as above, in effect, appears to add another ground based on which disclosure of information can be exempted. No public body is permitted under the Act to take upon itself the role of the Legislature and import new exemptions hitherto not provided. The Act leaves no such liberty with the public authorities to read law beyond what it is stated explicitly. There is absolutely no ambiguity in the Act and creating new exemptions will go against the spirit of the Act.

    Under this Act, providing information is the rule and denial an exception. Any attempt to constrict or deny information to the sovereign citizen of India without the explicit sanction of the law will be going against rule of law.

    Right to information as part of the fundamental right of freedom of speech and expression is well established in our constitutional jurisprudence. Any restriction on the fundamental rights of the citizens in a democratic polity is always looked upon with suspicion. Even the Parliament, while constricting any fundamental rights of the citizens, is very wary. Therefore, the Commission is of the view that no competent authority has the sanction to import new exemptions and in the process curtail the fundamental right of information of citizens”.

    Above two issues are part of the decision in Mr. Rakesh Agarwal v. Tis Hazari Court, New Delhi : CIC/SG/A/2009/000677/3392 of 22-5-2009.

 PM’s surgery :

    Mr. Jagdish Jetli made an RTI application to AIIMS, New Delhi seeking information on 7 points connected to the second heart by-pass surgery on the Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh by a team drawn from Asian Heart Institute (AHI), Mumbai led by Dr. Rama Kant Panda. Information sought included :

•      Details of expertise of all members of the AHI team

•      Rules of the AIIMS under which a team from a private institute was asked to conduct this surgery.

    The CPIO gave certain information which according to Mr. Jetli was vague and evasive.

The Bench of Mrs. Annapurna Dixit, CIC decided as under:

“The respondent submitted that the AIIMS has nothing on record regarding the qualifications of Dr. Panda who conducted the by-pass heart surgery, nor have reasons for his selection been recorded. He stated that the decision to invite Dr. Panda was taken jointly by the PMO and family members of the Prime Minister. The appellant’s contention was that the public has a right to know why a premier institute such as the AIIMS which is staffed by the best doctors in the country and with the best of medical facilities had to invite a “doctor from outside to conduct the operation in its premises. He added that this is a matter of great concern to the public and that inviting a doctor from another institute has eroded the reputation of AIIMS. Keeping the peculiar facts of the case in mind and in the light of the fact that Dr. Panda had used the facilities belonging to AIIMS, which is a public authority, the Commission directs the CPIO to obtain the relevant information from the Asian Heart Institute regarding particulars of Dr. Panda and to provide the same to the appellant. The appellant also to be informed about how the decision to invite Dr. Panda to conduct the surgery was arrived at and for what reasons and also be provided with minutes of any meetings in this connection, available with the AIIMS. All information to be provided by 20th June, 2009.”

[Mr. Jagdish Chander Jetli v. AIIMS, CIC/ AD/ A/ 09/00609 dated May 21, 2009]

S. 25 of the RTI Act provides that the Central Information Commission and the Sta te Informa tion Commissions as soon as practicable after the end of each year, prepare a report on the implementation of the provisions of the RTI Act during the year and forward a copy thereof to the appropriate Government.

Annual Report 2006-07 of Central Information Commission is now submitted in April 2009. It is surprising that it has taken two years to prepare and publish the annual report. One does not know when Annual Reports of 2007-08 and 2008-09 would be prepared and published. Words ‘as soon as practicable’ are nebulous. One wishes that time limit was set in the Act as it stands in other Acts like the Companies Act. As reported in this feature in June, Maharashtra SIC submitted the annual report of 2008 to Vidhan Sabha on 16-3-2009, i.e., within less than 3 months, praiseworthy achievement. Hereunder, I reproduce salient features of the Annual Report of the Central Information Commission as appears in the executive summary printed in the said Report:

i) The number of requests made to each Public Authority [Vide S. 25(3)(a) of RTI Act] : the period under report witnessed exponential increase in the number of requests (1,71,404) received by Public Authorities. If all ministries are taken together the number of requests received in year 2006-07 are seven times over previous year. This increase will rise to more than 8 times if comparison is made for top ten ministries. The number of requests received by Public Authorities of top ten Ministries in year 2006-07 were 1,38,501 in comparison to 16,680 during 2005-06.

ii) Rejection of the requests [Vide S. 25(3)(b) of RTI Act] : out of 1,14,724 requests received by top 5 ministries only 8.9% requests are rejected during 2006-07 in comparison to rejection of 26.5% requests by top five ministries under different sections in the previous year. When all ministries are considered together, only 8.98% requests received are rejected in the year 2006-07 in comparison to 13.9% in the previous year. The major rejections were u/s.8 of RTI Act 2005 followed by u/s.11, u/s.24 and u/s.9. On an average, authorities under different ministries disposed 66% of the requests received in year 2006-07.

iii) Number of appeals/complaints decided by the Central Information Commission (Vide S. 25(3)(c) of RTI Act) : Total number of appeals or complaints received by CIC were 6839 during 2006-07 (1156 in Quarter-I, 1483 in Quarter-If, 1583 in Quarter-Ill, and 2617 in Quarter-Tv). The total number of appeals received by Public Authorities during 2006-07 was 15298. Out of these 8466 (74.93%) appeals were accepted by Public Authorities and 4888 (31.95%) were rejected.

iv) Disciplinary  action taken  [Vide S. 25(3)(d) of RTI Act] : The total number of show cause notices issued against various public information officers by Central Information Commission for not being able to comply with the provisions of the RTI Act during 2006-07 were 259. Out of these 259 cases, penalties are imposed in 24 cases u/s.20(1) of the RTI Act and also recovered in 12 cases. In addition, S. 20(2) was invoked in 8 cases. Further, compensation was awarded to 12 appellants by the Central Information Commission u/s.19(8) of RTI Act.

Amendments to the  RTI Act :

In the address by the President of India, Shrimati Pratibha Devisingh Patil to the Parliament on 4th June 2009, in Para 32, she has covered number of measures on which her Government will initiate steps within the next hundred days. One of the items therein is :

Strengthening Right to Information by suitably amending the law to provide for disclosure by Government in all non-strategic areas.

However, it appears that amendments proposed are completely of different nature: The Times of India on June 19 reports:

In a body blow to claims of transparency, the UPA Government has proposed amendments to the RTI Act exempting all file notings except those dealing with social and development issues besides restricting access to pending policy decisions, cabinet documents and examrelated documents. The amendments also envisage increasing RTI fees substantially. The draft amendments proposed by the DoPT signal that the Government is keen to bring in changes in the law that it had been forced to drop in 2006 under pressure from Left parties and RTI activists. In a move aimed at discouraging ‘motivated information-seekers’ the DoPT Ministry has suggested that payment (at present Rs.10)should be hiked. There is a view in the Government that citizens should be made to pay for the pay of the officers working on RTI besides the amount for photocopying or accessing the information sought.

Objecting to the above proposal, Mr. Shailesh Gandhi, earlier RTI activist and presently erc has addressed a letter to the Prime Minis ter.

He states: It would be appropriate if the Government transparently accepts certain boundaries in the exercise of improving transparency.

The minimum requirements for this would  be :

1) No reduction  in the scope of S. 2(0, (h), (i) and (j).

2) No increase or addition in the exemptions u/s.8(1) of the RTI act.

The law has been spread by citizens across the coun-try and they value it very dearly. There are some worries in their minds about losing anything in the exercise of their fundamental right. It would be in the fitness of things if the Government declared the amendments they are proposing to the Act, and gave the reasons for the amendments publicly. I request you to clarify these matters soon so that citizens feel reassured.

•  File notings  :

Probably, as noted above, the proposed amendment for non-disclosure of file notings is caused by the serious battle going on between CIC and DoPT since years. CIC has often ruled (including under the Full Bench decision) that file notings are information as defined u/s.2(f). On the other hand, DoPT continues to hold the view that it is not an information. In FAQs as appearing on www.persmin.nic.in the Ministry, on interpretation of ‘what does information mean ?’ answers:

Information means any material in any form including records, documents, memos, emails, opinions, advices, press releases, circulars, orders, log books, contracts, reports, papers, samples, models, data material held in any electronic form and information relating to any private body which can be accessed by a public authority under any other law for the time being in force but does not include file notings’.

In an unprecedented move, CIC chief Wajahat Habibullah in early June issued summons to Joint Secretary S. K. Sarkar and Deputy Secretary Anuradha Chagti to appear on June 17 to explain why they should not be prosecuted under the IPC and penalised under the RTI for their failure to correct the misleading claim made on the DoPT website about file notings.

The provocation was the DoPT’s refusal, despite repeated directions to correct the misleading claim made on its website, that file notings were not part of the information that could be disclosed under the RTI. While other public authorities, including the Law Ministry and the Sc, have long accepted the CIC’s ruling that file notings are not exempt from disclosure, the DOPT has maintained otherwise on its website, much to the CIC’s chagrin. Habibullah found it. ‘appalling’ that the nodal department of RTI had ‘sought to emasculate the mandate’ of S. 19(7) which stipulates that the CIC’s decisions are ‘binding’.

RTI rescues Chembur residents from illegal garages:

For over five years, around 20,000 families in Chembur, Mumbai faced cronic problems of noise and air pollution coming from nearby illegal commercial garages and workshops. Their repeated complaints to the civic authorities failed to bring any relief. Irked by the indifference from the authorities, the residents filed a Right to Information plea and have now got their way. The RTI application clearly stated that these establishments were operating without licences. Not only that, they had encroached upon the footpaths violating more rules.

The civic officials have admitted that the RTI information will help them to come strongly against the illegal garages. The residents have more than one reason to cheer now, as not only their action will ensure less pollution, but it will also stop water-logging during the monsoons.

•  RTI and  e-governance :

Citizens across the country can now exercise their Right to Information on the phone and Internet. Inspired by the success of [aankari, a Bihar State Government initiative to accept RTI applications through phone calls, the Centre is all set to replicate the model across the nation.

Listing his priorities after taking over as the Min-ister of State for Personnel and Public Grievances, Mr. Prithviraj Chavan said that the Government of India would soon facilitate RTI queries through the phone and Internet by adopting the Jaankari model, albeit with more refinements in technology.

The Bihar Government’s citizen-centric Jaankari project had earned it the national e-governance award last year. Using the effective tools of voice communication, thus enabling even the poor and uneducated to file RTI queries. The Jaankari initiative only involves making a phone call by dialing 155311 and communicating details of the desired information to a call-centre person. The call-centre executive then drafts an RTI application and sends it to the public authority concerned.

•  Electricity  Consumption bills (ECb) in Mumbai:

You may be shocked with these figures but they are as obtained under RTI application: