Send RTI amendment bill back to Parliament for reconsideration: ex-CIC

Former Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi has urged President Ram Nath Kovind to return the Right to Information Amendment Bill to the Parliament for reconsideration to "defend the citizen's fundamental right".

Kovind was a member of the standing committee which finalised the Right to Information Bill, 2004, suggesting parity of information commissions with the Election Commission to ensure that they perform their duties "independently and with complete autonomy".

Gandhi said whenever the government does not disclose any information which is not exempted, citizens approach the Information Commission.

"This places the responsibility on the commissions which are creation of the RTI Act to adjudicate fairly to safeguard the right of the citizen. The final appellate authority is the Information Commission. It is necessary for them to be independent of the government to discharge their duty fairly," he said in a letter to Kovind.

The RTI bill, first presented in Parliament in December 2004, proposed that the Chief Commissioner be equated to secretary to the government and other commissioners be equated with joint secretaries, Gandhi said.

This bill was sent to a parliamentary committee which discussed it in six meetings, finally proposing that to ensure the commission and its functionaries perform their duties independently and with complete autonomy, it is necessary to elevate their status to that of the Election Commission of India.

"You will recall this clearly since you were an important member of the committee and had made a significant contribution to its working. The present amendment proposed seeks to reverse only this part of the law in a very hurried manner.

"No plausible reasons are being given for reversing this well thought out wisdom and foresight shown by the committee," Gandhi said in the letter.