Don't undermine RTI: Activists

Don't undermine RTI: Activists
Malini Nair / DNASunday, November 15, 2009 3:39 IST

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_don-t-undermine-rti-activists_1311780

Delhi: In the run-up to the assembly elections in Jharkhand later this
month, a group of activists have been drawing up a report card of the
sitting MLAs there. Among other things they have been seeking
innocuous details about their attendance in the assembly. There is
only one stock answer they have been getting to such questions: this
is a vexatious question.

"We are constantly being accused of trying to defame or blackmail
officials by demanding answers to questions that are perfectly valid
under the RTI Act," says Anjali Bharadwaj, director of Society for
Citizens' Vigilance Initiative, a group that drew up such performance
reports of MPs before the Lok Sabha elections.

If the recent amendments proposed to the RTI Act comes through,
activists like Bharadwaj will have an even tougher time ferreting
information from officialdom. It is to preempt this move that RTI
activists from across the country held a protest meeting in the
capital today.

RTI groups from Delhi, UP, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu have
banded together under the NCPRI to generate greater awareness among
people about the dangers of diluting the act. There are two areas in
the proposed amendment that really bother them: the move to disallow
vexatious questions and to keep under cover the file notings.

"How do you define vexatious or frivolous? To a senior bureaucrat who
earns Rs 50,000 a month a daily wager's demand to know to where his
Rs200 went seems frivolous. But to the poor man it is life and death,"
says activist Shekhar Singh who, along with Aruna Roy of Mazdoor Kisan
Shakti Sangathan led a survey across 11 states on the RTI.

Senior bureaucrats and ministers, he says, are most resistant to share
information. "Their travel bills, records -- how dare these be
questioned, is what irks them the most," he says.

Magasaysay Award winner Aruna Roy says this desire to curb the right
is not new. The case against amendments is clear: why look for changes
when the existing act hasn't been implemented according to law? "It's
like asking for a new dress without trying on the one you have. How
will you know what fits?" says Roy.

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