RTI bill referred to standing committee

The government on Thursday referred the bill to keep six national political parties out of the ambit of the Right To Information Act to a standing committee for wider consultation, thereby meeting a demand by civil society and citizens.

Updated on: Sep 6, 2013, 01:09:24 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The government on Thursday referred the bill to keep six national political parties out of the ambit of the Right To Information Act to a standing committee for wider consultation, thereby meeting a demand by civil society and citizens.

The Hindustan Times was first to report on August 24 that the bill would be referred to the standing committee after an online petitioned signed by over one lakh people against the amendment was submitted to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Minister for personnel V Narayanasamy told Lok Sabha that the government was recommending that the bill be referred to the standing committee on law and personnel for wider public consultation. Members from different political parties supported the move.

Several political parties such as Trinamool Congress and Biju Janata Dal had publically opposed the RTI amendment bill. Several BJP members were also not in favour of the change to exempt parties. Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley had advocated within the party that exempting only political parties may not be tenable under law as other indirectly government funded organizations may seek similar exemption.

Sensing political trouble the government finally decided to refer the bill to standing committee after dilly-dallying for long. Singh had refused to assure a delegation of RTI activists led by Aruna Roy that it would be referred to the committee. But, official sources said, that the government thought it prudent considering growing public opinion against the amendment.

The government has brought the RTI amendment bill to nullify the Central Information Commission order of June designating six national political parties as public authorities under the law and asking them to appoint information officers to provide information to RTI applications.

Subhash Chandra Agarwal, on whose RTI petition the CIC had brought national parties under the transparency law, has already filed a complaint of non-compliance with the information watchdog. The parties were to comply with the CIC order by middle of August.

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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