Govt Undermining Info Commissioners: 1st CIC Slams RTI Amendments

Activists protests the RTI amendments on 22 July, the same day the Lok Sabha passed the bill.

(Photo: Arnica Kala/The Quint)

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"Naturally if I am getting my salary from you, I will to an extent be beholden to you even if you do not try to overwhelm me. So I will have to have a regard that 'Mera paisa toh unse hi aa rahaan hai. (My money is coming from them)."

The first chief information commissioner of India, Wajahat Habibullah, told The Quint the amendments to the Right To Information Act will make the law weaker. “The final decision maker on the accessibility to information can not in anyway be weakened. In fact, they need to be strengthened,” he said.

Members of the civil society came together to protest the RTI amendments on Monday, 22 July, which were eventually passed in the Lok Sabha on the same day.

The RTI amendment states that the tenure and salary of the state and central information commissioners, the people who respond to our RTI queries, will be decided by the government. Activists say this is a dangerous move, as it will take away the independence of the commissioners and make them answerable to the government instead.

RTI activist and co-convenor of the National Campaign for People's Right to Information Anjali Bhardwaj, who was at the forefront of the protest, said this amendment would make the information commissioners 'caged parrots.'  RTI activist Nikhil Dey added that these amendments would harm federalism. He said,

“Obviously the paymaster, the person who decides, is going to control that office.”

Both Bhardwaj and Dey were critical of the Modi government, which they say introduced these amendments on the sly.

Bhardwaj told The Quint, "Look this amendment has been brought in completely surreptitiously. The government did not tell people when it was passed by the Cabinet."

Dey said last year the PM Modi-led government had tried to alter the rules of the RTI Act, but this year they kept the public from knowing what the amendments were. "Why are they not putting the Act on the website and taking public feedback? I guarantee you, if you take public feedback over the country, the overwhelming, more than 90 percent people will say, ‘We don't want these amendments’."

While the Act has currently been passed in the Lok Sabha, the activists urge the government to “at least send the RTI Act to a select committee for scrutiny.” While the bill goes to the Rajya Sabha, the activists are keenly looking towards the Opposition to ensure it does not pass.