Voluntary disclosure beats govt's secrecy

The Central government ministries now have six months to voluntarily disclose information on a dedicated website.

Updated on: Dec 27, 2010, 24:38:46 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Central government ministries now have six months to voluntarily disclose information on a dedicated website. Earlier under the Right To Information Act, implemented on October 12, 2005, the Central Information Commission (CIC) had given the government 120 days to comply with the act's section four for the voluntary disclosure.

As secrecy is still the general norm, that has not happened in the government functioning. "This mental barrier needs to be crossed, not so much through talks and proclamation of adherence to openness in governance but through tangible action," the CIC said, in a recent directive to the government.

Defining the tangible action, the CIC directed the government ministries and departments to segregate information for voluntary disclosure, and those for which the citizens will have to file an RTI application. The law will apply only to the information that the departments categorise as non-voluntary in nature.

The voluntary disclosure will be listed on a dedicated website to be launched by the CIC.

Each department will have to designate a transparency officer to ensure that the commission gets the information on time at regular intervals.

The officer will also have to ensure that the public information officers (PIOs) adhere to the 30-day period for replying to an RTI application.

These officers will then be held accountable if the department is found to be repeated violator of the RTI regulations.

The CIC has enlisted the type of information to be disclosed voluntarily.

It includes remuneration received by every employee working in an organisation and his or her duties, the procedure to be followed in decision-making and a statement on utilisation of the funds.

The commission felt that unless the key requirements of section four are not fully met, the suo motu objectives of the (RTI) Act as enshrined in its preamble cannot be realised. "Hence this directive," the order signed by all information commissioners said.

In the last few years, the CIC through different orders have been asking the government departments to voluntarily disclose information but failed to get positive response.

"It was the only option left with us to ensure that the government implements the law in totality," an information commissioner said on condition on anonymity.

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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