Aruna Roy, Kejriwal team up to fight RTI change

Renewed political attack on Right To Information (RTI) Act to exempt political parties from its purview has brought together friends turned foe Aruna Roy and Arvind Kejriwal together. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jun 30, 2013, 08:16:12 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Renewed political attack on Right To Information (RTI) Act to exempt political parties from its purview has brought together friends turned foe Aruna Roy and Arvind Kejriwal together.

They issued a joint statement anchored by former central information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi, who asked them to come together for a cause --- beat the desire of the political parties to kill RTI through an amendment.

“There are reports that the government is thinking of promulgating an Ordinance to amend the Right To Information Act. This Act was passed by our Parliament and has now become part of the extremely valuable citizen empowerment for our democracy,” said the statement issued by 13 eminent activist including Roy and Kejriwal.

They also appealed to the government and all political parties to drop any consideration of amending the RTI Act saying there was no emergency requiring an Ordinance.

In a separate statement, Aruna Roy’s National Campaign for People’s Right To Information (NCPRI) said it was opposed to amending the RTI Act. “We believe that the CIC order will go a long way in ensuring transparency and accountability in the functioning of political parties. Inclusion of political parties under the RTI Act will ensure that parties are accountable to the people of the country,” the NCPRI statement read.

The NCPRI said that if the government and political parties have any objections to the order of the CIC, the appropriate response would be to challenge the order in court. In the past, the government and other organizations have often challenged CIC judgements in the court.

“This only goes to show that when political parties themselves are subject to the transparency law, they are willing to go to the extent of amending this landmark legislation to ensure that they are not open to public scrutiny under the Act, the NCPRI said.

The NCPRI has opposed any proposal to amend or dilute the RTI Act.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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