Civil Society Forces Indian Government to Defer
Amendments to RTI Act

The Indian Government in August this year deferred the tabling of the Right to Information (Amendment) Bill, 2006 in Parliament amidst protests from right to information activists, civil rights group and indefinite hunger strikes by eminent social activists. This is indeed a triumph for civil society and the media who have been successful in preventing the Government from narrowing the scope of the Act by limiting the definition of 'information' and by unjustifiably broadening the exemptions to disclosure.

The Right to Information Act (RTI Act) passed by Parliament last year is new and finding its feet. Both educated and unlettered people around the country are struggling to make it a reality. Their efforts have begun to stem corruption and arbitrariness in decision-making. So it is only natural that shock and dismay pervaded the country when the Government tried to restrictively amend the Act in a way that would have had removed 'file notings' away from public scrutiny. The proposed amendments would have ended up snatching away people's right to know in what circumstances, through what process and under whose advice their legislators and civil servants reach decisions - big and small. File notings are a generic term used to refer to the opinions, advice and recommendations recorded on file by officers involved in the process of decision-making on any matter under the consideration of Government offices.

Stung by the levels of protest, on 26 July the Prime Minister's Office issued a rebuttal. The press release tried to clarify that “the Union Cabinet had in fact approved last week an amendment to the Act that specifically provides that file notings of all plans, schemes and programmes of the Government that relate to development and social issues shall be disclosed.” But why clarify what was never in doubt?

This class of information called 'file notings' relating to 'development and social issues' is nothing special. It was never excluded from the purview of the RTI Act under any of the exemptions to disclosure that broadly related to national security, commercial competition, and personal privacy. Nor was it mentioned as an exception to the definition of ‘information’.

The confusion regarding the status of file notings was a conscious creation of the Department of Personnel and Training (DOPT), the nodal agency for implementing the RTI Act at the national level. The DOPT’s website in its Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about the Act insisted that file notings were not in fact part of the definition of ‘information’.

more...