REDUCED TO INSIGNIFICANCE

On October 12, the Right to Information (RTI) Act completed 20 years. Activists who monitor the Act, and former information commissioners, say that amendments by successive governments have rendered the law toothless. As per Central Information Commission's latest annual report (2023-24), the number of RTI applications rejected in the year was over 67,615—the highest ever. BHAGIRATH curates a conversation on what went wrong with the law that was sought to bring transparency and accountability in governance.

- By BHAGIRATH

'Sunshine Act in sunset mode?'

SHAILESH GANDHI

FORMER CENTRAL INFORMATION COMMISSIONER

At its heart, the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005, is founded on the principle that in a democracy all information held by the government belongs to the citizens. The government acts as a custodian of this information on behalf of the populace. Citizens legitimise their representatives by electing them, who, in turn, legitimise the bureaucracy. Therefore, the default mode under RTI is that all information must be shared with citizens.

After its enactment, citizens took to RTI with enthusiasm since it empowered them to monitor the government and get accountability. The Act lists ten specific exemptions in Section 8(1) and if the information sought does not fall within these exemptions, it must be provided.

However, this Sunshine law appears to be going into the sunset mode. There are many reasons for this decline, some of them being poor choice of information commissioners and enormous delays in disposing appeals. But the biggest damage to the law has been by one Supreme Court judgement: "Girish Ramchandra Deshpande v Cen Information Commr & Ors (2012)".