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In ‘We The People’, Prashant Bhushan and Anjali Bhardwaj write about India’s RTI Act, the most extensively used transparency law globally, and the attacks on it.
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I do not know if Anajali Bhardwaj is only doing vacancy watching of the information commissions or also checking if the information commissioners are doing their job correctly too.
I too have been using the RTI Act with the sole purpose of furthering the objective of the Act as stated in the Preamble: ‘to promote transparency and accountability in the working of every public authority’ and ‘to contain corruption and to hold Governments and their instrumentalities accountable to the governed’.
My experience over the years has led me to introduce a Mission Statement for saving the Right to Information. It goes like this:
Save Right to Information. Use Right to Information Act.
Get Information, Or……
Expose at least three idiots/traitors* among public servants!
1. The Public Information Officer
2. The First Appellate Authority (and the head of public authority where the head of the public authority is not the FAA!) and
3. The Information Commissioner
* An idiot is one who does not know the job s/he is getting paid to do and a traitor is one who knows it but does not do it. Provided that even an idiot can be branded a traitor based on the consequences of his/her action
Right from the first Chief Information Commissioners of the Central Information Commission and Kerala State Information Commissions, the way they had started implementing the RTI Act, there was no doubt that instead of containing corruption, these commissions were going to be the new breeding grounds of corruption. And long before our Supreme Court had accepted a wide meaning for corruption, while exonerating Adv Prashant Bhushan in a contempt of court case against him for alleging that 8 Chief Justices of India were corrupt, the information commissions had established one firmly-that is, even when directing the defaulting Public Information Officers to provide information sought, failing to impose the mandatory penalty. And going by the quip that there are no free lunches, the possibility of corruption in its usual sense cannot also be ruled out. Today I am convinced that these commissions have been reduced to rehabilitation centers for retired bureaucrats, both at the Centre and the states.
Right from not disposing of complaints and appeals on first come first served basis to disposing them off in lackadaisical manner to failing to impose the mandatory penalty of defaulting PIOs the failings of the information commissioners are there for all to see. In the matter of their failures to impose the mandatory penalty the information commissioners are also liable to be prosecuted under Section 219 of the IPC which can end up with imprisonment for 7 years. But how can an ordinary citizen do it? The courts themselves are a big failure in dispensing justice. Then there is the cost factor and also the absurd need for members of the public to take permission from one public servant to prosecute another.
I do not know if Anajali Bhardwaj is only doing vacancy watching of the information commissions or also checking if the information commissioners are doing their job correctly too.
I too have been using the RTI Act with the sole purpose of furthering the objective of the Act as stated in the Preamble: ‘to promote transparency and accountability in the working of every public authority’ and ‘to contain corruption and to hold Governments and their instrumentalities accountable to the governed’.
My experience over the years has led me to introduce a Mission Statement for saving the Right to Information. It goes like this:
Save Right to Information. Use Right to Information Act.
Get Information, Or……
Expose at least three idiots/traitors* among public servants!
1. The Public Information Officer
2. The First Appellate Authority (and the head of public authority where the head of the public authority is not the FAA!) and
3. The Information Commissioner
* An idiot is one who does not know the job s/he is getting paid to do and a traitor is one who knows it but does not do it. Provided that even an idiot can be branded a traitor based on the consequences of his/her action
Right from the first Chief Information Commissioners of the Central Information Commission and Kerala State Information Commissions, the way they had started implementing the RTI Act, there was no doubt that instead of containing corruption, these commissions were going to be the new breeding grounds of corruption. And long before our Supreme Court had accepted a wide meaning for corruption, while exonerating Adv Prashant Bhushan in a contempt of court case against him for alleging that 8 Chief Justices of India were corrupt, the information commissions had established one firmly-that is, even when directing the defaulting Public Information Officers to provide information sought, failing to impose the mandatory penalty. And going by the quip that there are no free lunches, the possibility of corruption in its usual sense cannot also be ruled out. Today I am convinced that these commissions have been reduced to rehabilitation centers for retired bureaucrats, both at the Centre and the states.
Right from not disposing of complaints and appeals on first come first served basis to disposing them off in lackadaisical manner to failing to impose the mandatory penalty of defaulting PIOs the failings of the information commissioners are there for all to see. In the matter of their failures to impose the mandatory penalty the information commissioners are also liable to be prosecuted under Section 219 of the IPC which can end up with imprisonment for 7 years. But how can an ordinary citizen do it? The courts themselves are a big failure in dispensing justice. Then there is the cost factor and also the absurd need for members of the public to take permission from one public servant to prosecute another.