SC fillip to RTI

In sharp contrast to the Executive arm of the Government systematically undermining the citizens’ right to information, and political parties of all hues closing ranks to chorus that this right does not apply to them, the Judiciary has now strengthened the case for RTI. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled that the office of the Chief Justice of India does come under RTI regime, ‘though conditions apply’. This office is a public authority, and bringing it under the Right to Information Act in no way subverts the independence of the Judiciary, the apex court felt. It was a case out of the ordinary as the Supreme Court had approached itself as a litigant in 2010 against a Delhi High Court ruling upholding a 2009 order by the Central Information Commission (CIC) that the CJI’s office comes under RTI.

The legal question had arisen over a petition by RTI activist Subhash Agarwal to the CIC seeking information about assets and grounds for appointment of judges. The Supreme Court had then challenged the CIC’s order that the demand for ‘too much transparency’ would compromise the Judiciary’s independence, and anyway, the declaration of assets was a ‘voluntary’ act by a judge making available ‘personal’ information to public domain. After the Supreme Court set up a five-member constitutional bench to go into this question, its ruling now will surely provide a shot in the arm to beleaguered RTI activists. After all, the RTI law had soon become a sort of unwanted child for the very UPA government that had enacted it in 2005. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh addressing a convention of information commissioners in 2011, while calling RTI a powerful tool to help curb corruption and improve governance — had also voiced concern that the RTI law could lead to public authorities being deluged with frivolous requests for information, while discouraging honest, well-meaning public servants from fully airing their views in official file notations.

Disclosure of information should be balanced with ‘limited time and resources available with public authorities’, Dr. Singh had contended. After the NDA government came to power at the Centre in 2014, the nails have been systematically hammered into the RTI coffin, activists fear. Alarm bells went off in July this year when the government amended the RTI Act to end the parity between the Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) and the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), as well as between Information Commissioners (ICs) and Election Commissioners (ECs), regarding their tenure plus terms, salaries and conditions of service. The government’s argument was that a distinction must be made between a ‘constitutional’ body like the Election Commission and a ‘statutory’ one like the Information Commission.

Continuing its follow-up, the government in October notified the RTI rules, cutting down the tenure of information commissioners from five years to three, with further discretion to decide on their immediate removal, allowances or service conditions. A pattern is thus emerging — of systematic downgrading of information commissions as an institution, with chilling effect on public efforts to seek more transparency in government workings. Then there was Union Home Minister Amit Shah making a nuanced address to information commissioners last month, in the course of which he said that the government is proactively putting out as much information as possible in public domain ‘so as to reduce the need for RTI applications’, as well as to inculcate a ‘sense of responsibility’ so that RTI is ‘not used for personal reasons unless injustice is happening’. In this context, he referred to the Prime Minister’s ‘dashboard system’ through which people can access information online about public welfare schemes.

While the Executive’s arguments about a balanced approach to RTI and preventing its misuse cannot be faulted, its intentions have always been suspect considering the treatment meted out to information commissions — often left headless for long periods, starved of manpower and basic infrastructural support — as contrasted to lenient treatment to erring public information officials found stonewalling RTI queries. Unless these transparency bodies are adequately empowered, how can they hold babus to account for misdeeds committed behind the veil of official secrecy? The Supreme Court’s qualified vote of confidence to RTI should now encourage more public debate about the citizen’s right to know. While right to privacy and need for confidentiality can prevail over a matter ‘of interest to the public’, the apex court has distinguished this from ‘public interest’. And it is at the altar of ‘public interest’ that disclosure or confidentiality must be justified.