Strong implementation of the Right to Information Act (2005) is the best protection of civil rights.
The Right to Information Act (2005) is a law of the Indian Parliament enacted in 2005, which lays down the rules and procedures for citizens’ right to information. It replaced the erstwhile Freedom of Information Act, 2002. Under the provisions of the RTI Act, any citizen of India can request information from a public authority, which must be responded to promptly or within thirty days. In cases involving matters of life and liberty, the applicant must provide the information within 48 hours. The Act stipulates that every public authority shall computerize their records for wide dissemination and shall publish certain categories of information in advance, so that citizens can formally request information. On September 20, 2020, the Right to Information was held to be a fundamental right in the Ashwani K. Singh case. The objectives of the Right to Information Act, 2005 are to promote transparency and accountability in the functioning of every public authority.
The Act is applicable to the whole of India. It covers all constitutional powers including executive, legislative and judiciary. Any institution established by an Act of Parliament or a State Legislature, private bodies are not covered by the Act. In the decision of Sarabjit Roy vs. Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission, the Central Information Commission also reiterated that companies with privatized public utility (public utility) are covered by the RTI. The Central Information Commission (CIC) has stated that political parties are public authorities and are accountable to the citizens under the Right to Information Act. But in August 2013, the government introduced the Right to Information (Amendment) Bill, which removes political parties from the ambit of the Act.
Currently, no parties are covered by the RTI Act. A case has been filed to bring all political parties under its ambit. The Right to Information Act, 2019 was passed on July 25, 2019 and amended the terms and conditions of service of the Information Commissioners of the Centre and the states. It was criticized as watering down the independence of information commissions. On 13 November 2019, the Supreme Court of India upheld the Delhi High Court’s decision to bring the office of the Chief Justice of India under the purview of the Right to Information Act (RTI).
The benefits of this law include full rights of the common man to provide information on any initiative, time saving, protection of information, getting a response from a responsible officer, and reducing the chances of corruption. The disadvantages of RTI include getting wrong information, filing cases on sudden requests for information from various officials at different levels, additional burden on the authorities to manage the process, and the high number of exempted entities in the form of RTI.
The functioning of the law has not only led to rejection of RTI requests, but also to the fact that the authorities are swamped with lakhs of requests, which is defeating the original purpose of the Right to Information Act to make the government transparent and accountable. 60 per cent of the RTI appeals to the Information Commissioners of Delhi are rejected on various grounds such as not being typed or not written in English or not having an index or list of dates of the attached papers. Many citizens are forced to approach NGOs, RTI activists or lawyers to file their RTIs. Bihar, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala are the top five Indian states that received the highest average number of applications per year under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005.
The Bihar State Information Commission (SIC) has improved its performance significantly. In 2022, it provided 67% of the information sought. Maharashtra has the highest backlog of 1,00,000 RTI appeals/complaints. The Gujarat Information Commission (GIC) has blacklisted and barred nine applicants from filing applications under the RTI Act in the last two years. – Also, the 44% shortage of Information Commissioners, lack of awareness and poor literacy among a large part of the country’s population are contributing to the poor administration of RTI, which came to ensure public interest. The current COVID-19 pandemic has put lives and livelihoods at risk. In this context, free flow of information is an important part of crisis management.
Recently, the Satark Nagrik Sangat (SNS) released the response report under the RTI (Right to Information) Act 2021-22, which shows that Tamil Nadu is the worst in RTI response, providing only 14% of the information sought. Maharashtra is at the second position, sharing 23% of the information sought. Only 10 states provided complete information to the RTI applications filed as part of this assessment. These include Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand, the northeastern states of Sikkim, Nagaland and Tripura. Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh returned almost 40% of the appeals or complaints they received.
It is estimated that out of 18 information commissioners, 11 returned appeals or complaints without passing any orders. RTI in India has been mired in controversies over its use in political battles, asking for the educational levels of political opponents or being misused by civil society. RTI activists have been attacked and murdered. The challenges of this Act include misuse for personal gain, low public awareness, time-bound nature, ineffective record management system, and lack of adequate powers to the Information Commissions to implement their decisions.
For effective implementation of this Act, government agencies should put all the information that can be disclosed on their websites. A system should be put in place to eliminate duplicate cases. Misuse of RTI can be prevented by introducing a provision to know the reason for filing a petition. There should be a provision to impose penalty for wasting the valuable time of the Information Commissioner. Right to Information should be balanced with the right to privacy under the Act. Awareness can be created among the people by launching awareness campaigns in regional languages through radio, television and print media in the relevant localities. The implementation of any Act depends on public awareness. Therefore, the functioning of this Act always depends on the informed participation of the people in the activities related to Right to Information in the country.
