Sonia-led NAC opposed to RTI amendments

Asks govt to drop recommendations of Department of Personnel and Training

 In a meeting on Thursday, the NAC decided to recommend to the government that the restriction to “one subject matter” be dropped from the purview of the proposed amendments to the RTI rules.

The amendment has been proposed by the Department of Personnel and Training.
The NAC, which sets the United Progressive Alliance government’s agenda for social sector, had serious differences with the DoPT on the issue of amendments to the RTI rules.

The members of the advisory body’s Working Group on Transparency, Accountability and Governance had several meetings with the DoPT officials to iron out the differences over the past few weeks.

Apart from restricting each plea seeking information under the RTI Act to “one subject matter”, the NAC opposed at least two other amendments proposed by the DoPT – one for restricting the word limit of each application to 250 words and another for abatement of an RTI application in the event of the death of the applicant.

The NAC, which comprises eminent civil society activists and intellectuals, was of the view that the restrictions the DoPT proposed to impose on the RTI pleas would in fact go against the spirit of the landmark legislation. It also shared the RTI activists’ views that the provision for abatement of an RTI application in the event of the applicant’s death, if inserted in the rules, could be misused by those who would like to hide information and would put the lives of whistleblowers in peril.

Aruna Roy, who heads the NAC’s Working Group, said on Thursday that the DoPT could be successfully persuaded, not only to enhance the word limit from 250 to 500 (excluding annexure and addresses of the applicant and its recipient) for each RTI application, but also to drop the proposed amendment for abatement of the pleas after the death of the respective information seekers. She told the panel that the DoPT was still adamant to restrict each RTI application to “one subject matter” only.

The NAC, however, decided to insist that no such restriction should be imposed on the RTI pleas.