NAC questions govt's draft RTI rules

The National Advisory Council (NAC), headed by Sonia Gandhi, has sought a reply from the Centre on a report by its working group on transparency.

The National Advisory Council (NAC), headed by Sonia Gandhi, has sought a reply from the Centre on a report by its working group on transparency. The report says the Right to Information (RTI) rules are against the basic spirit of the law drafted by the NAC in its first avatar.

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The report prepared by Aruna Roy, a council member, had highlighted that RTI rules fail to address several lacunas in the law and will instead create problems in its implementation. The NAC has also pointed that these rules should have been an opportunity to define certain grey areas in the transparency legislation. But, this has not been taken care of.

The department of personnel and training has circulated the draft RTI rules claiming that it will make implementation of the law more effective.

Roy says the rules should empower the central information officers to get information from their parent departments and improve functioning of the Central Information Commission. The issue will be discussed at the next NAC meeting.