Govt departments interpret RTI law differently

Different Central government departments have different interpretations of the transparency law, Right To Information, when it came to disclosing information. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jan 2, 2012, 21:01:39 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Different Central government departments have different interpretations of the transparency law, Right To Information, when it came to disclosing information.

While some government departments have proactively disclosed the information, others have denied similar information citing prohibitory clauses of the RTI law.

This reporter had filed a RTI application with the Cabinet Secretariat seeking copies of the minutes of the Group of Ministers and Empowered Group of Ministers constituted since June 2009. The Secretariat forwarded the application to all Central government departments to provide the information. Over 50 government departments responded to the RTI application almost four months it was filed.

Some ministries such as home affairs, urban development, law, information and broadcasting and commerce provided the copies of the minutes of the ministerial groups.

The urban development ministry provided minutes of the GoM held to decide Phase-III of the Delhi Metro within three months of the meeting with details of what the ministers had said.

The law ministry provided copies of the GoM to confer voting rights to non-resident Indians and Judicial Accountability Bill. The commerce ministry gave the minutes of the GoM on price stablisation fund scheme for coffee, tea, rubber and tobacco growers.

These are just a few welcome departments on the RTI front.

The civil aviation ministry refused to provide minutes of the GoM which took a final view on amendments on Anti-Hijacking Bill, which was introduced in Parliament in 2010.

Without specifying the clause of the RTI Act, under which the information has been denied, the ministry’s Public Information Officer Ashok Kumar said “the details of the GoM meetings and actions taken thereupon cannot be divulged being secret in nature.” The ministry gave similar reply regarding a GoM on Taj International Aviation Hub at Greater Noida, whose last meeting was held in October, 2010.

The department of administrative reforms and public grievances, which considered a report to strengthen the RTI Act, failed to provide the information sought. Instead, the department directed the applicant to visit its website to find the required information. The RTI law, however, clearly says that the information has to be provided in the format sought.

The Department of industrial policy and promotion refused to provide information regarding salt pan lands in Mumbai and its suburbs saying providing such information will “prejudicially affect the economic interest of the state”. The department citied section 8 1 (a) of the RTI act for denying the information.

The ministry of finance provided details of the decision taken at a GoM on price of sale of shares of Central Public Sector Enterprises but refused to give the minutes citing section 8 of the RTI Act, which says the information cannot be provided unless the decision is completed.

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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