PPP projects out of RTI, CIC knocks on PM door

With the government serving a severe blow to transparency in the Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects worth one trillion rupees the Central Information Commission has decided to seek Prime Minister’s Manmohan Singh’s intervention.

Updated on: Jul 17, 2011, 23:02:27 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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With the government serving a severe blow to transparency in the Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects worth one trillion rupees the Central Information Commission has decided to seek Prime Minister’s Manmohan Singh’s intervention.

“We will be writing to the Prime Minister that there should not be a blanket ban on making RTI applicable to PPP projects,” said an Information Commissioner, following a decision at the commission’s last meeting.

The CIC wanted the government to have a template for providing information to citizens regarding the PPP projects to make them “transparent and accountable”. It had asked the Planning Commission to insert a clause for providing information to citizens in the agreement with the private partners.

But, its endeavor was shot down by the Law ministry this month when it overruled application of RTI to PPP projects saying the law does not allow private executioners of the projects to be declared public authorities.

The reluctant plan panel had sought Law ministry’s opinion on the commission’s letter after panel deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia went public with his views against making RTI applicable to the PPP projects.

The PPP projects have entered public service areas such as health, education, social infrastructure and power distribution, which impact citizens directly. It is estimated that India is executing PPP projects worth one trillion rupees.

In wake of this, there had been growing demand from civil society to bring these projects under the RTI ambit to evaluate public service delivery, erstwhile domain of the government.

“With time role of private partners in providing public service has increased. The government’s stand of not making PPP projects accountable to people is not acceptable and we want some mechanism through which people can seek information,” said Venkatesh Nayak, co-convener of the NGO National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI).

The CIC had brought private distribution companies in Delhi and National Stock Exchange, two major private partners in service utilities, under the RTI ambit but its orders were stayed by Delhi High Court.

“Our view is public… now the government has to take a call for ensuring transparency,” said Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi, who has earlier termed the government’s decision to exempt CBI from purview of RTI as violation of the transparency law.

Not differing with him, Chief Information Commissioner Satyananda Mishra felt that they have done their job and it is now for the civil society to take up the issue.

With this being a second blow to RTI within a month after exemption of CBI from RTI, the civil society members will be taking up the issue at the next Sonia Gandhi headed National Advisory Council meeting. “We as civil society will raise the issue at an appropriate form,” Nayak said.

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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