In a shocking and very dangerous development, yesterday the BJP Government used its brute majority in Lok Sabha to push through the bill amending the Right to Information (RTI) Act. The current RTI Act (2005) equates the status of the Central Information Commissioners (CICs) with the Election Commissioners and the State Information Commissioners with the Chief Secretary in the States, so that they can function independently. But the Right to Information (Amendments) Bill, 2019 is a brazen attempt to dismantle these very important provisions. This will thoroughly empower the Central government to unilaterally decide the tenure, salary, allowances and other terms of service of Information Commissioners, both at the Centre and the States. 

RTI Act Amendment Move : “A Bill that May Kill a Right”

The amendment of RTI Act is nothing but the Modi Government’s yet another shameless attempt of hollowing out our institutions and avoiding all accountability and any kind of scrutiny. The government wants to ensure its complete political control over the state and central RTI offices, and hence wants the tenure and salary of various RTI officers to remain subject to its own political interests. If these are subjects to the Centre’s whims, high chances are information commissioners will be sacked for passing inconvenient orders. Further, the Central Government’s power to even decide the tenure, salary etc of information commissioners of the state is nothing but a blatant assault on the very idea of federalism.

Former Central Information Commissioner, M. Sridhar Acharyulu has rightly said that these amendments would kill the RTI entirely. He categorically wrote, “ The RTI (Amendment) Bill, 2019, is set to dilute the Act by downgrading Information Commissioners’ status, salary and autonomy. It will also impact the sovereignty of states since it curtails their powers to decide on the degree of independence for Information Commissioners in their own jurisdiction. If the bill is passed, there would be an anomalous situation where states would have the power to appoint commissioners, but the Centre will decide their tenure, salary and status.” (Hindustan Times 22 July 2019)

Why BJP is so desperate to destroy the heart and soul of RTI Act? Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey have aptly written (The Hindu, 22 July 2019):

“RTI is a constant challenge to the misuse of power. In a country where … corruption and the arbitrary use of power is a daily norm, the RTI has resulted in a fundamental shift — empowering a citizen’s access to power and decision-making. It has been a lifeline for many of the 40 to 60 lakh ordinary users, many of them for survival. It has also been a threat to arbitrariness, privilege, and corrupt governance. More than 80 RTI users have been murdered because their courage and determination using the RTI was a challenge to unaccountable power.

The RTI has been used brilliantly and persistently to ask a million questions across the spectrum — from the village ration shop, the Reserve Bank of India, the Finance Ministry, on demonetisation, non-performing assets, the Rafale fighter aircraft deal, electoral bonds, unemployment figures, the appointment of the Central Vigilance Commissioner (CVC), Election Commissioners, and the (non)-appointment of the Information Commissioners themselves. The information related to decision-making at the highest level has in most cases eventually been accessed because of the independence and high status of the Information Commission.”

That’s why the ruling BJP Government frantically wants to amend the RTI Act.  The National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI) has pointed out further dismantling of RTI and burial of transparency in a very systematic way by the Modi regime.

08 out of the 11 Information Commissioners mandated under the RTI Act have not been appointed by the Modi Government. With this large number of vacancies, how it is even possible to dream about transparency?

Because of the lackadaisical implementation of the RTI Act, the pendency of RTI requests jumped from 8.5 lakhs (in 2014-’15) to 14.5 lakhs (in 2017-’18), with 40% of the cases being rejected by the Commission in 2018!

Modi Government has done nothing to implement the Whistleblower Protection Act to address the issue of attacks and killings of information seekers.

Rule of Law Replaced with Rule by Loyalists

Fascist takeover of all our institutions and imposing rule by loyalists are nothing new for BJP – RSS. Right from Day 1 of the Modi I government, it has been bending rules to ensure that all key posts in the country are filled by RSS/BJP leaders and ideologues – from ONGC to BHEL to BPCL. It introduced ‘lateral entry’ into UPSC to ensure that crucial posts are appointed on the basis of political allegiance. From CBI to RBI to Election Commission, it is same story of rule by bhakt – loyalists. And, this is often used to block inconvenient data and scuttling transparency which is the Modi govt’s modus operandi to deal with all tough questions. Since 2016, the NCRB has stopped publishing data on farmer suicides in the country. Since 2016, the Labour Bureau has simply stopped carrying out employment-unemployment surveys. Govt told the Parliament that there exists NO data on mob lynchings! There is complete lack of transparency in electoral funding with electoral bonds allowing anonymous political funding, subsequent to which the BJP’s funding has jumped up 12 times. And now, they want to destroy the RTI Act.

We must fight back any attack on the RTI Act, which came into being only as a result of peoples’ movement in the country to ensure greater transparency. We thoroughly reject the amendments of RTI Act. We must fight to save this people’s law.

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