RTI

Of Games and Game Changers – Who are they and can anybody call themselves a Game Changer ?

[This is a guest post. If you want to see your name on this blog, please use the following link - http://indiapoliticalblog.com/write/]

2 very eminent individuals arrived on the scene at the cusp of the Anna Hazare breakthrough. While their virtues cannot surely be doubted, what was visible was their penchant for the platform that was till then occupied by Anna Hazare. At this defining moment arrived a man clad in white who could neither speak Oxford English nor dress for the camera crew. The very spectacle of a man leading the crusade against corruption who espouses a long forgotten Ideology (Gandhian) in a world obsessed with economic development would be enough to make anyone sit up and notice if not emulate.

In fact emulate is what the eager multitudes were seen to be doing, for many of them had sported those Gandhian Caps in a show of solidarity with the man himself. While Anna let out sound bytes in bits and pieces his team (also known as Team Anna) became his de-facto spokespersons to the media, the people and the government. Endless hours of heated debates on all channels would consume countless hours with Arvind Kejriwal, Prashanth Bhushan and sometimes even Kiran Bedi.
Read more…

The Government decides to take the CBI away from inspection under the RTI Act – hiding more details ?

The UPA Government is currently under a lot of pressure because of the various corruption investigations ongoing; the courts are looking into various issues and even guiding the CBI on how to do its investigations. In specific cases such as the Telecom 2G scam, the Supreme Court will scold the CBI when it feels that some action is not being taken, or there is some sort of interference in the actions of the CBI. This heat must be getting to the Government, since it has used the CBI in the past as a political weapon; guiding it in specific cases such as the Bofors case where the CBI proved spectacularly useless in finding out anything, as well as in the various disproportionate assets case against political leaders. Whenever there is a discussion in Parliament where the Government needs support, it dangles the cases being probed by the CBI and gets support from these political parties.
The RTI Act is a very powerful law that is still being evaluated in terms of the impact it can have on exposing wrong deeds; already, the exposure from RTI queries is helping a number of people. When you apply the RTI Act on CBI queries, the agency will be forced to reveal more details about why it took a certain position in many cases, causing potential embarrassment to the Government and to the agency. Is it any wonder that the Government accepted a plea by the CBI that its investigations can empower national security and moved the CBI under the organisations listed in the second schedule of Section 24 of the RTI Act, the same act which covers the intelligence agencies under the Government of India. In effect, the Government has now decreed that if the CBI has been investigating the assets of a leader, that information is now a matter of national security and its release will imperil the security of the nation. Further, if the CBI has been investigating the assets of IAS officers who are being accused of corruption, this again is a matter of national security. Absurd logic, is it not ? But what do you expect from a Prime Minister who has been ruling over a Government that has been universally accepted as being the most corrupt in the history of India; his own reputation of personal honesty has been blown apart after minister after minister has been running into problems. Consider the refusal of RTI applications in these cases (link to article):
Read more…

RTI: Getting personal information is allowed

In a recent court order, the Madras High Court has interpreted the usage of RTI to allow obtaining personal information of current Government officials or pensioners for some specific reasons. It is a public perception about RTI that the usage of RTI is only meant for obtaining information, either about the process of movement of information in the Government, or about actions taken by units of the Government. So, RTI has typically been used to obtain details about spendings (with recent high profile cases being about trying to determine the expenses of ministers on re-doing their offices or official houses, or even of the cost of holding a Cabinet meeting, as was done in Karnataka).
This case is a more difficult case that was refused by the RTI Commission against an application, where there was a court order against a former employee of the Government, but the court order could not be executed since the person could not be found. At the same time, there was another arm of the Government that was actually aware of the address, since the person was receiving pension from the Government, and the pension was being paid out of a post office. So, if you were to take the right perspective, the court order execution should have been possible by getting the address from the post office; but it is impossible to believe that the Government would be so proactive. So, it is the interested person who had to use the RTI form for the required purpose (link to article):

Read more…