CBI demanded only partial exemption from RTI Act

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is probing several high-profile corruption cases, had demanded only partial exemption from the ambit of the RTI Act as per its initial proposal but later pressed for a blanket cover which was approved by the government this year.

The file notings provided by the Department of Personnel and Training, under RTI Act, show that in 2007, Committee of Secretaries had rejected the demand of the CBI to be included in the list of organisations exempted from the RTI Act except on allegations of human rights violations and corruption.

It had said CBI can utilise provisions of the RTI Act to reject an information.

This year, CBI, which is probing several high profile cases like 2G scam, CWG scam and Adarsh Scam, pushed a fresh demand seeking "limited exemption" from the RTI Act in areas of intelligence collection, secret verification besides internal analysis of evidence and sources or process involved in its collection.

The request of the agency was termed as "vague" by the officials of the DoPT who demanded "full justifications" for such a demand.

The Central Vigilance Commissioner has also opined that only intelligence gathering arm of the CBI can be brought under the exemption clauses of the RTI Act.

The then Solicitor General of India Gopal Subramaniam had opined that the CBI can be considered to be added in the second schedule of the RTI Act, "with the qualification that after seeing out the words Central Bureau of Investigation certain words in parenthesis will be added i.e. 'except matters pertaining to administration, personnel, accounts/finance, budget and training."