What makes Right To Information Act 2005 special is its power and practicality to seek and get information from government authorities. The law also promoted transparency and accountability in public authorities.
Salient Features of Right To Information Act 2005
- Replaced Freedom of Information Act 2002.
- Jammu and Kashmir has separate Right To Information Act – RTI 2009.
- RTI relaxes restrictions placed by Official Secrets Act 1923.
- 3 Levels – Public Information Officer, First Appellate Authority, Central Information Commission(CIC).
- Time period for Public Information Officer : Expeditiously or within 30 days from the date of receipt by public authority.
- Maximum time gap for 1st appeal : 30 days since limit of supply of information is expired.
- Time period for Appellate Authority : Within 30 days or in exceptional cases 45 days from the date of receipt by public authority.
- Maximum time gap for 2nd appeal : 90 days since limit of supply of information is expired.
- RTI act also asks for computerization and proactively publish information.
- Bodies applicable under RTI : Constitutional bodies at center and state ( Legislature, Executive, Judiciary), bodies/NGOs owned/financed by government, privatized public utility companies.
- Bodies excluded under RTI : Central Intelligence and Security Agencies, agencies of state specified through notification. The exclusion is not absolute.
- Central Information Commission shall consist of : 1 Chief Information Commissioner and upto 10 Central Information Commissioners.
- The Chief Information Commissioner shall hold office for a term of five years from the date on which he enters upon his office and shall not be eligible for reappointment.
- 31 sections and 6 chapters in the act.
- Section 8 deals with information exempted under the purview of this act.
Role in Governance
- Transparency – It lifts the veil of obscurity from government and thus, people are informed about government decisions.
- Accountability and responsibility – Once the government actions are open for public, the government knows it cannot act capriciously and whimsically.
- Participatory governance – only once the citizens know what the government is performing. They can throw in their ideas or challenges.
- Rule of law- it enforces the idea that even government is not above rule of law.
Issues with its implementation of the Act
- Infrastructure provided to Information commissioner-ate is inadequate. It results in delay in processing application and penalising authorities.
- Political parties have still not replied to the CIC orders. More so, they have not even initiated a legal response to the orders. This shows utmost disregard.
- State governments such as Karnataka have come up with orders reducing the word limit, making formats for question and in some cases prohibited questions in regional languages.
- Penalities are rarely imposed and even that is too minimal. Having no inventive on the officials to provide information.
- Data in government departments is not kept, not organised and this makes getting information difficult.
- Government have misused provisions related to secrecy and national security to become immune to RTI applications.
Success
Even with these issues, RTI has had a phenomenal effect on Indian governance.
- Several scandals such as 2G, CWG etc. have come up due to RTI
- NGOs and think tanks use this information to come up with reports on governments functioning, greatly influencing public opinion.
- Media has played a proactive role and more than the penalty their pressure has forced officials to provide information.