83% increase in rejection of RTI applications on national security grounds: Data

In 2019-20, the Central government ministries and departments received 1.29 million RTI applications.

Updated on: Mar 5, 2022, 14:12:28 IST

By Chetan Chauhan

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NEW DELHI: There was an 83% increase in rejection of Right to Information (RTI) applications on the grounds of “national security” by the Central government ministries during 2020-21 even though the overall rejection rate went down by 2.95%, revealed an analysis of the RTI applications.

The biggest reason for rejection of RTI applications continued to be section 8 (1) J, which prohibits providing personal information. (File)

Venkatesh Nayak of Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), a human rights campaign body, analysed the reasons for rejection of RTI applications in over 2,182 departments that fall under different central government ministries. Every ministry has to submit the annual status on RTI applications filed to the Central Information Commission (CIC).

In 2019-20, the Central government ministries and departments received 1.29 million RTI applications, which was 2.48% lesser than the previous financial year. In the country, 13.3 million RTI applications were received in this period, according to CIC. Highest increase in RTI applications were received by the ministries of health and steel.

Out of the 53,537 applications rejected, 1,024 RTI applications were on the grounds of national security as compared to 557 the previous year, according to the analysis.

Nayak said although the overall rejection rate had fallen, the government increasingly used clause 8 (1) a of the RTI Act (exemption to provide information that can impinge national security) to reject RTI applications. “Even the ministry of consumer affairs rejected 401 applications in the pandemic year invoking national security exemption,” he said, terming it to be a disturbing trend.

The ministry of labour and employment used another provision related to seeking information about intelligence and security agencies to reject RTI applications. This was despite no security or intelligence agency coming under the ambit of the ministry. Section 24 of the RTI Act provides that information except related to corruption cannot be asked from security authorities listed under the schedule of the law.

“The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution are notable ministries to invoke the national security exemption in hundreds of cases during the pandemic year to deny information,” Nayak said.

However, like previous years, the biggest reason for rejection of RTI applications continued to be section 8 (1) J, which prohibits providing personal information. About 12,000 applications were rejected on this ground in 2019-20. “Most of such applications are related to information about service and inquiry against government officials,” said RTI activist Subhash Aggarwal.

According to the RTI Act, once the RTI application is rejected, the applicant can file an appeal with the first appellate authority, which is a senior officer in the ministry or the department, where the application is filed. In case of not satisfied with the order of the first appellate, second appeal can be filed with the transparency watchdog, the CIC.

The analysis found that there was fall in rejections by seven ministries such as finance, defence, personnel and education. However, there were several other ministries such as steel, external affairs, railways and health and family welfare which saw a substantial increase in rejections of the RTI applications.

In the case of some ministries such as steel and consumer affairs, the high rejection rate, was primarily due to very less rejections the previous year, the analysis found.

Anjali Bhardwaj of National Campaign for Right to Information said using security provisions for denying information to people by authorities, which are directly not dealing with national security issues, clearly shows reluctance to share information. “This is a way to prevent people from filing RTI applications on important subjects,” she 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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