Citizens may get RTI info for PPP projects

The private players in the government’s public private partnership (PPP) programmes may soon have to furnish information under the Right to Information Act. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Mar 2, 2011, 23:12:48 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The private players in the government’s public private partnership (PPP) programmes may soon have to furnish information under the Right to Information Act.

The Central Information Commission (CIC) has asked the Planning Commission to make a suitable RTI clause in agreements being signed with the private partners under the government's PPP schemes.

“We feel, once such conditions are built into the PPP agreements and the private parties willingly subject themselves to these conditions, a lot of confusion in this regard will go and the citizens will have the access to vital information regarding projects which affect their lives,” said Chief Information Commissioner Satyendra Mishra, in a letter to Planning Commission deputy chairperson M S Ahluwalia.

The RTI Act provides that private parties, which are substantially financed by the government will have to appoint public authorities to provide information to citizens under the law.

However, the private parties have been reluctant claiming that they are not covered under the RTI law even through they have received land or funds from the government. The CIC to its astonishment has found that even the ministries have not been willing to provide information regarding the PPP projects claiming that the private bodies were outside the government control.

To end the confusion, the CIC has suggested that every PPP project including draft agreement should be published for inviting public comments and objections before finalizing them. The CIC had suggested two options to implement the RTI law for PPP projects.

The PPP agreement should include a necessary condition that the Special Purpose Vehicle or any other entity which comes into being as a result of the PPP would be a public authority within the meaning of section 2 (h) of the RTI Act.

Second, the Central Public Information Officer of the ministry or department undertaking a PPP project will be equally responsible for providing the information sought.

The move, the CIC believes, will improve the accountability of such entities to both the government and public at large.

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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