The RTI (Amendment) Bill which the ruling party got passed in the Lok Sabha by its sheer brute majority and in the Rajya Sabha by winning over some of the opposition is of a piece with the Modi Government’s systematic and sustained efforts at subverting the autonomy of every constitutional and statutory body and making it subservient to the Union Government. The statement of objectives of the Bill clearly states that the government wants to reduce the stature of the Central Information Commissioner.
Earlier, the CIC’s status was equivalent to the Election Commissioners and judges of the Supreme Court. Under the 2005 Act, which was passed by the Congress Government, the Information Commissioner had the authority to issue directives to the Cabinet Secretary, Principal Secretary and other senior officials to disclose information under the RTI Act. The Chief Information Commissioner, the Information Comssioners and even State Information Commissioners had a fixed tenure of five years or up to the attainment of the superannuation age. They could not be removed from their office before the expiry of their term. This safeguard is now removed.
Not only that. The amendment enables the government to usurp the power to fix the tenure, term, status and salary. The Act of 2005 did not give this power to the Union Government. Under the amended Act, the Centre now has the power to “prescribe by rules the terms of the offices of and salaries and allowances and terms and conditions of service of” the Chief Election Commissioner, the Information Commissioners and even the State Information Commissioners and other Commissioners.
Once the President gives his assent and the Bill becomes the law, the Union and State Information Commissions will become appendages of the government, like any other government department. The downgrading of the status of the CIC has been done deliberately so that the CIC and SICs cannot ask for information from officers senior to them in rank like the Cabinet Secretary. Congress parliamentary party chairperson Sonia Gandhi rightly termed the amendment to the Act as “disempowering every Indian citizen” and went on to say that the Act now stood on the brink of extinction. Once the new law comes into force, the government will effectively plug any leakage of information embarrassing to the Centre and State governments.
Denial of information is tantamount to suppression of the freedom of expression guaranteed by the Constitution. All freedoms and democratic rights given by the Constitution are sought to be taken away from the very people who have voted this government to power. The Minister of State for the PMO, Jitendra Singh, ominously said that the Bill is an “enabling legislation”. How he was repeating Hitler’s language!
One of the first things that Hitler did on coming to power in 1933 was to pass an “Enabling Act” which disabled the very Weimar Constitution under which it was passed. The avowed purpose of the law was to “remedy the distress of the people and the nation”. Article 2 of the law said: “Laws enacted by the Government of the Reich may deviate from the Constitution as long as they do not affect the institutions of the Reichstag and the Reichsrat.” Thus Hitler usurped the power to make laws that were violative of the Weimar Constitution (“may deviate from the Constitution”) to become the greatest and most ruthless dictator of the 20th century. The disturbing question that arises in the mind is: Is the Indian Constitution also heading for the same fate? Will one person’s autocracy be sanctified by an “enabling” legislation that will put an end to democracy and all the democratic institutions of India.
(Barun Das Gupta is a veteran journalist and hails from a Gandhian family.)
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Who’s Afraid of the RTI Act
M.G. Devasahayam
(This is an extract from the article, to leave out the repititions from the above piece.)
Secrecy and flagrant violation
Strangely enough, the government introduced the RTI amendment in the Lok Sabha in complete secrecy, and in flagrant violation of the Pre-Legislative Consultation Policy, which mandates public disclosure and consultation on draft legislations. Owing to the undemocratic way of its introduction, the contents of the draft amendments were not known to MPs, citizens and the media until the Bill was circulated to the Lok Sabha members on the eve of its introduction.
Eminent social activist Aruna Roy, the force behind the RTI Act, has this to say: “The status of information commissioners was extensively discussed during the formulation of the law, including in the Standing Committee. In fact, the Committee opined, ‘IC is an important creation under the Act which will execute the laudable scheme of the legislation… It should, therefore, be ensured that it functions with utmost independence and autonomy.’ It recommended that to achieve this objective, it would be desirable to confer on the central chief information commissioner and information commissioners, status of the chief election commissioner and election commissioners respectively. The committee’s recommendation was accepted and passed by parliament unanimously through an extensive process of public and Parliamentary consultation.”
The present government, within weeks of assuming power, calls this an ‘anomaly’ and seeks to remove it overnight in a stealthy manner. Why this supersonic speed, unseemly haste and determination to amend the law? Obviously, someone is afraid of the RTI Act.
In the mid-60s, there was a popular play titled Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? The story revolves around two couples trying desperately to suppress certain truths, which to their consternation, manages to come out, leading to thunder and fury. In her writing, Virginia Woolf attempts to expose the truth: all of the things that the couples try to cover up. When the couples sing the song together, they make a mockery of their own fear of the truth and are attempting to project a false image.
Drawing a parallel
Do we see a parallel with the present government and the EC? Indeed, we should. Particularly in the context of mentioning the anomalies between the EC and ICs as the reason for this amendment. If the objective is just to remove any ‘anomaly’, it could have been done in a routine manner in full public view. Why this guilt, tearing hurry and secrecy?
Therein lies the tale of the recent election to parliament, which was devoid of basic elements of integrity. There is deep suspicion about major manipulation of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) aided and abetted by the EC itself. The issue is so serious as to prompt 64 former civil servants (many of whom have conducted and supervised elections) belonging to the Constitutional Conduct Group to write to the EC. They stated:
“The 2019 General Elections appear to have been one of the least free and fair elections that the country has had in the past decades… In the past, despite the efforts of criminal elements, musclemen, and unscrupulous politicians, the persons who graced the EC did their best to ensure that elections were conducted as freely and fairly as possible. In these General Elections, however, an impression has gathered ground that our democratic process is being subverted and undermined by the very constitutional authority empowered to safeguard its sanctity. It was rare in the past for any serious doubts to be raised about the impartiality, integrity and competence of the EC. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the present EC and the way it has conducted the General Election-2019.”
And though suppressed in the mainstream media, there has been an avalanche of allegations and charges against the EC and several public campaigns have been launched to take the Commission to task in order to save the dying democracy. In the process, there will be a spate of RTI applications to the EC and appeals before the ICs to ascertain facts and information in order to activate these campaigns as well as to seek remedies through courts of law. The EC has already started to feel the heat and has resorted to bluff and filibuster.
A typical case is the reply received by for their RTI query to the EC seeking information and documents on the VVPAT count data during the Lok Sabha elections-2019: “Polling Station wise data of Lok Sabha Election-2019 is not available with the Commission. It may be available with CEOs of all States/UTs. You may obtain information from the office of CEOs of the States/UTs by submitting application under RTI Act, 2005 separately. Your application cannot be transferred to them as more than one PIOs are involved u/s 6 (3) of RTI Act, 2005.”
Are ICs being compromised to bail the Election Commission out?
This absurd reply is while the circulars issued by the EC themselves say that all Chief Election Officers (CEOs) are to submit their VVPAT data to the commission within seven days of the counting day. So why is the data ‘not available’ with them? The Central Information Commission order says that even if multiple PIOs are needed to share the information, it is the responsibility of the PIO in possession of the RTI query to transfer it to rest of the PIOs. So why did they claim they cannot transfer the request to more than one PIO? Why is the EC attempting to hide the massive mismatch between the EVM-count and VVPAT-slips by refusing to share this crucial data?
The EC also seem to be in panic. How else can one explain the conflicting statements issued by it regarding the mismatch between the EVM vote-count and VVPAT-slips? On May 26, 2019, the ECI said that there was no mismatch. But on July 22, it admitted eight mismatches. To boot, EC has commenced a Goebbelsian mode of publicity blitzkrieg extolling the virtues of the EVM trough paid advertisements. All these indicate that there must be something very rotten and there are many skeletons in the EC’s closet.
It looks as if having committed a grievous assault on democracy, the EC is now caught between a rock and a hard place. Political bosses and beneficiaries of this election have come to its rescue to wipe out the autonomy of the ICs, only to conceal the misdeeds of the EC. The former is being sacrificed at the altar of the latter.
The issue basically is: Should the truth about the arbitrary, autocratic and partisan functioning of the EC brought out into the open and made public? A la Virginia Woolf, ICs would be for revealing the truth, which the EC is desperately trying to suppress and cover up. When the EC mocks the IC, it is expressing its own fear of the truth and is projecting a false image before the people. So, who is afraid of the RTI Act? Do we need a jury?
(M.G. Devasahayam is a former IAS officer.)
Editor’s note: There could be another possible reason for Modi pushing the RTI (Amendment) Bill through the Parliament. In an article published in thewire.in, Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar writes that another reason why Modi wanted the RTI Act amended was to prevent orders like the 2016 CIC order by M. Sridhar Acharyulu which allowed inspection of the Bachelor of Arts results of 1978 – the year Modi claims to have graduated from Delhi University. The Delhi University challenged this order in the Delhi High Court, and since then, the case has dragged on in the court for two-and-a-half years. During the debate in Rajya Sabha on July 25, two senior Congress leaders – Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Jairam Ramesh – spoke directly about this link. Jairam Ramesh said, “There are five cases which have propelled the government to bring forward these amendments”, adding that the first was that “the CIC ordered disclosure of the prime minister’s educational qualification.”
