Mistakes in the Hindi version of the Right to Information Act, 2005 put up on the Centre’s RTI portal, were finally rectified after eight years of pushing the department concerned.
RTI activist Commodore (retd) Lokesh Batra, who pointed out 34 mistakes and did several follow-ups, said the corrected version of the RTI Act was updated on the website on November 2.
“I recently met the department of personnel and training (DoPT) secretary. It took herculean efforts to push officials of the Prime Minister’s Office, DoPT and the Union law ministry to get the results,” said Batra.
Batra had highlighted that the incorrect version of the RTI Act could have been used by Hindi speaking states, hampering the process of seeking information through it.
The English version of the RTI Act says: “(h) Public authority means any authority or body or institution of self government established or constituted (a) by or under the Constitution (b) by any other law made by Parliament (c) by any other law made by state legislature (d) by notification issued or order made by the appropriate government (i) body owned, controlled or substantially financed (ii) non-government organisation substantially financed, directly or indirectly by funds provided by the appropriate government.”
Batra said when the Act is translated into Hindi, clause (i) reads ‘body owned, controlled or substantially financed by the Central government’.
“It says this clause is only applicable to the ‘Central government’, which is not the case. This was a serious mistake and needed immediate correction. Hindi speaking states can make full use of this mistake to their advantage,” he added.
It took Batra 15 months to move the government to find out the 34 mistakes.
“I sent emails-letters to the Central Information Commission and the Prime Minister.
I filed many RTIs and in between, went to CIC hearings and orders,” he said, adding that it took another 40 months for the Centre to put up the corrected version.
Batra said instead of putting up a bilingual version of the RTI Act on the official website as was decided before, English and Hindi versions of the Act have been updated.
“It was intimated that a minor error in Section 19(6) is still left, and will be corrected in the next edition,” Batra said.
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