CIC sets norms to protect RTI activists

India's transparency watchdog the Central Information Commission has decided to take upon itself the task of safeguard interests of the Right To Information (RTI) applicants who face harassment for seeking information. Chetan Chauhan reports. Bloody trail

Updated on: Oct 5, 2011, 02:12:29 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India’s transparency watchdog the Central Information Commission has decided to take upon itself the task of safeguard interests of the Right To Information (RTI) applicants who face harassment for seeking information.

In 2010, 28 RTI activists were allegedly attacked after filing their applications and this year two activists Manglaram of Rajasthan and Amarnath.

India's transparency watchdog the Central Information Commission has decided to take upon itself the task of safeguard interests of the Right To Information (RTI) applicants who face harassment for seeking information.

In 2010, 28 RTI activists were allegedly attacked after filing their applications and this year two activists Manglaram of Rajasthan and Amarnath Pandey of UP were badly injured in lethal attacks. In the past year RTI activists such Shehla Masood of MP, Amit Jetwa of Gujarat and Satish Shetty of Maharashtra have lost their lives fighting for the transparency cause.

With no government policy on protection of information seekers, the commission at its last meeting decided to initiate some steps in a bid to assure RTI applications not to be deterred by any threats.

Once the complaint receives a complaint of an assault or murder of an RTI applicant, it will first examine the pending RTI applications of the victim and will direct the concerned department to release the information on its website suo-motto.

Information Commission Shailesh Gandhi, who circulated the note on which the commission took the decision, said the move will act as a deterrent to harass RTI activists.

"If the information seeker is attacked all the information will automatically be available in the public domain and the purpose of the attack to prevent information to be made public will be defeated," he said.

The CIC believes that its decision will be emulated by the state information commissioners who will issue prompt orders on releasing the information suo-motto to the government offices when a complaint is received.

"If the state commissions work on similar lines it will give a sense of protection to RTI users," Gandhi said who was an RTI activist in Mumbai before joining the commission three years ago.

The commission has also decided that it will seek information regarding the police investigations into any case of attack on the RTI activist in a bid to put some governmental pressure on the investigating agencies to act. "In most cases the RTI applicants are common people and do not have that sort of influence which the attackers may have," Gandhi said.

The CIC's decision is the first institutional framework to provide protection to RTI applicants. However, its efficacy would be known when the commission receives complaint of harassment or assault.

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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