Cabinet?s FDI paper trail thrown open

For the first time, Right to Information Act has been used to access cabinet papers, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Nov 6, 2006, 02:25:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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For the first time, the Right to Information (RTI) Act has been used to access cabinet papers.

On October 19, the Central Information Commission (CIC) allowed Magsaysay Award winner and activist Arvind Kejriwal to access a copy of the cabinet note on foreign direct investment (FDI) in single-brand retailing. Central Information Commissioner Padma Balasubramaniam asked the Ministry of Commerce to allow Kejriwal to inspect all the relevant files and file notings on the issue.

RTI activists said the CIC's was a landmark decision, as people could now see for themselves how the highest level of government decided on matters of public interest.

The government had been reluctant to disclose the files after Kejriwal submitted an application in February. The central public information officer, Gauri Singh, first told the CIC that there was no file on single-brand retailing. Singh later said the cabinet note on the issue was a secret document and could not be disclosed as it contained other policy issues.

Overruling Singh's objections, the CIC asked her to provide Kejriwal with a copy of the cabinet note relating to the issue.

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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