Citation Act No. 22 of 2005 Date enacted 15-June-2005 | Enacted by Parliament of India Date assented to 22-June-2005 | |
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Territorial extent Whole of India except Jammu and Kashmir Date commenced 12-October-2005
First RTI application submitted by Shahid Raza Burney to a police station in Pune on 12 October 2005 | ||
Right to Information (RTI) is an Act of the Parliament of India to provide for setting out the practical regime of right to information for citizens and replaces the erstwhile Freedom of information Act, 2002. Under the provisions of the Act, any citizen of India may request information from a "public authority" (a body of Government or "instrumentality of State") which is required to reply expeditiously or within thirty days. The Act also requires every public authority to computerise their records for wide dissemination and to proactively certain categories of information so that the citizens need minimum recourse to request for information formally.
Contents
- Scope
- Private bodies
- Political parties
- Right to InformationRTI Act 2005 Implementations Controversies and Digital India
- Digital Right to Information System
- Activism around an efficient Right to Information
- Intellectual Property Rights and Right to Information RTI Act 2005
- Fees
- References
This law was passed by Parliament on 15 June 2005 and came fully into force on 12 October 2005. The first application was given to a Pune police station. Information disclosure in India was restricted by the Official Secrets Act 1923 and various other special laws, which the new RTI Act relaxes. It codifies a fundamental right of citizens.
Scope
The Act covers the whole of India except Jammu and Kashmir, where J&K Right to Information Act is in force. It covers all constitutional authorities, including the executive, legislature and judiciary; any institution or body established or constituted by an act of Parliament or a state legislature. It is also defined in the Act that bodies or authorities established or constituted by order or notification of appropriate government including bodies "owned, controlled or substantially financed" by government, or non-Government organizations "substantially financed, directly or indirectly by funds" provided by the government are also covered in the Act.
Private bodies
Private bodies are not within the Act's ambit directly. In a decision of Sarbjit roy vs Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission, the Central Information Commission also reaffirmed that privatised public utility companies fall within the purview of RTI. As of 2014, private institutions and NGOs receiving over 95% of their infrastructure funds from the government come under the Act.
Political parties
The Central Information Commission (CIC), consisting of Satyanand Mishra, M.L. Sharma and Annapurna Dixit, has held that the political parties are public authorities and are answerable to citizens under the RTI Act. The CIC, a quasi-judicial body, has said that six national parties - Congress, BJP, NCP, CPI(M), CPI and BSP and BJD - have been substantially funded indirectly by the Central Government and have the character of public authorities under the RTI Act as they perform public functions In August 2013 the government introduced a Right To Information (Amendment) Bill which would remove political parties from the scope of the law. In September 2013 the Bill was deferred to the Winter Session of Parliament. In December 2013 the Standing Committee on Law and Personnel said in its report tabled in Parliament
Right to Information(RTI Act 2005) Implementations, Controversies, and Digital India.
The Right to information in India has been mired with controversies ranging from their use in political battles asking opponent degrees, or cases of blatant refusals to provide information on high profile projects to allegations of misuse by civil society.
The Right to information in India is governed by two major bodies viz.
Central Information Commission (CIC) – Chief Information commissioner who heads all the central departments and ministries- with their own public Information officers (PIO)s. CICs are directly under the President of India.
State Public Information Officers or SPIOs – Heading over all the state department and ministries the SPIO office is directly under the State Governor.
State and Central Information Commissions are independent bodies and Central Information Commission has no jurisdiction over the State Information Commission.
Digital Right to Information System
Though there is a push in India on digital governance, Right to Information has seen a neglect even after 11 years of its enactment.
A recent research on ballotboxIndia outlines that thought central ministries are covered by a single Digital window to file Right to Information requests with integrated payment gateways, and tracking mechanism. None of the states have yet came forward to implement their versions or use the existing Right to Information Digital Infrastructure.
The research report covering 29 states and union territories also highlights the responses from the SPIOs (State Public Information Officers).
Researchers in the study focussed on the Digital implementation and asked about plans or timeline to provide such facility. 64% State Public Information failed to respond. Rest of them merely took cognizance without any hard timelines.
The research also covers in details- the difficulty in filing manual Right to Information requests with the states with delays ranging many months of wait time and various follow ups and rejections.
Every state in India has different rules and fee structures to file an application through registered post without any tracking mechanism as covered in details in the report. Which puts Right to Information in India riddled with inefficiencies.
Activism around an efficient Right to Information
Researchers and Activists have been proposing changes to make the process easier, efficient and meaningful. One of it demands state and central information systems under one Digital System to streamline information flow and provide proactive information backed by streamlined mandatory reporting.
The Right to information(RTI Act 2005) was touted as one law which will bring in transparency and eradicate corruption by civil society direct involvement. Failure to implement it in a thoroughly and efficiently has led to rough loss estimate of $245 million yearly as per one estimate.
India being a federal state has many items in concurrent list and projects have multiple departments working on them, and sometimes projects are moved from one department to another.
With Central and State information commissions working in such a disconnect, and manual transfers of the request for information between departments lead to big delays, confusion, and loss of traceability.
It not only denies timely information, creates high barriers to information only a few with very strong motivations and means can cross, but puts a common citizen at the risk by exposing them directly to the departments and agencies which they are trying to find information on.
Intellectual Property Rights and Right to Information (RTI Act 2005).
Many civil society members have recently alleged the subversion of the right to information Act by the invocation of Intellectual Property rights argument by the government agencies from time to time.
Most notable are
Fees
A citizen who desires to seek some information from a public authority is required to send, along with the application, (a demand draft or a bankers cheque or n) payable to the Accounts Officer of the public authority as fee prescribed for seeking information.If the person is from a disadvantaged community, he/she need not pay.
The applicant may also be required to pay further fee towards the cost of providing the information, details of which shall be intimated to the applicant by the PIO as prescribed by the RTI ACT