‘Don’t reveal the secret of others’

Your right to get information from the government has become slightly more difficult. The government has prohibited public information officers (PIOs) from providing information marked as confidential by another department without consulting the latter.

Updated on: May 3, 2010, 24:54:16 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Your right to get information from the government has become slightly more difficult.

The government has prohibited public information officers (PIOs) from providing information marked as confidential by another department without consulting the latter.

The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), the nodal office implementing the Right To Information (RTI) Act, has curbed the power of information officers by invoking the “third party” clause for sharing inter-departmental information with RTI applicants.

The third party clause under the RTI was mostly applied in cases of an individual about whom an information would be sought. The RTI law clearly says third party information cannot be provided without prior consent of the concerned party.

But, there have been instances of a department providing the information it received from another department as part of inter-departmental consultations to RTI applicants, apparently creating disharmony.

So, the DoPT arrived at the conclusion that the third party clause under RTI law is also applicable to inter-government information.

“It (seeking consent) is a statutory requirement, non-compliance of which may make the public information officer liable for action,” said the department’s circular issued this week.

To avoid disciplinary action, the circular details the procedure that the information officers will now have to undertake a procedure to provide inter-departmental information.

The circular says that if a public information officer intends to give information marked as confidential by another department,it will have to provide chance to the latter department (third party) to make a submission in that regard.

The circular, however, does not say that the PIO will have to seek approval of the third party. But, allows the third party to challenge the decision of the PIO with the first appellate authority constituted under the RTI law and thereafter, with the Information Commission.

Many RTI activists feel that the circular is unwarranted as the RTI law provides for transferring an RTI application to the department, which has created the information.

“The circular is a clear setback for transparency in the government,” said Lokesh Batra, a Noida-based RTI activist.

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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