Activists mull moving Supreme Court to save the soul of RTI Act

Could this be the end of the RTI Act as we know it? With the government filing an affidavit in the Delhi high court justifying keeping the CBI out of the RTI’s purview, chances are that the transparency law will be severely weakened.

“This would be the beginning of the end for the RTI Act. We will have to fight back very hard. We may approach the SC or start a national agitation against the government’s decision of keeping the CBI out of the RTI Act’s purview,” Shekhar Singh of the National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information said.

“People have been telling me that the department of personnel and training (Centre’s nodal department to handle RTI issues) has already received applications from many departments requesting them to consider their exemption from the RTI. This way all departments will slowly get out of RTI’s purview,” he added.

Another NCPRI member Nikhil Dey said they had written to the prime minister twice and also met Congress president Sonia Gandhi on the issue. “Aruna Roy also raised the issue in the National Advisory Council. We are discussing our way forward,” Dey said.

The Centre has filed an affidavit in response to a PIL in the Delhi HC defending the CBI’s exemption from the RTI’s purview stating that the agency qualifies as a “security and intelligence organisation”. But, strangely enough, the government claimed that “exemption (given) was not blanket but only in cases involving national security”.

The Centre said it has received a legal opinion in this regard and it feels the CBI qualified as a security and intelligence organisation like the NIA and National Intelligence Grid (Natgrid) which are exempt under Section 24. It also claimed disclosing information relating to modus operandi and sources may jeopardize the agency’s functioning and could also affect public safety and national security.

However, Maj Gen VK Singh, former joint secretary in RAW, was critical of the justification on keeping the CBI out. “The CBI is neither a security agency nor an intelligence agency. Terms like security and agency are misused. Security agencies include armed forces, paramilitary forces and military forces while the IB, the RAW and the NTRO are intelligence agencies. The CBI is completely an investigation agency and their only role is investigation. I am surprised how can it be called a security agency?” Singh asked.