The Right to Information Act of 2005 

• The basic object of the Act is to empower the citizens, promote transparency and accountability in the working of the Government, contain corruption, and make our democracy work for the people in a real sense.
• It covers all the constitutional authorities, including executive, legislature, and judiciary; any institution or body established or constituted by an act of Parliament or a state legislature.

Read this article in HINDI

• In 1986, in L.K. Koolwal v/s State of Rajasthan and Ors, Supreme Court gave a clear-cut direction that the Freedom of Speech and Expression provided under article 19 of the Constitution clearly implies Right to Information as without information the freedom of speech and expression cannot be fully used by the citizens.
• In 1994, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) [an organization for worker’s rights] started a grassroots campaign for Right to Information.
• It resulted in government of Rajasthan enacting a law on Right to Information in 2000. Half a dozen states enacted laws on RTI Act. These include Goa (1977), Tamil Nadu (1977), Rajasthan (2000), Maharashtra (2000), Karnataka (2000), and Delhi (2001).
• The RTI Bill was passed by Parliament of India on 15 June 2005 and came into force from 12 October 2005.

• Citizens can claim any information from public authorities

• However, this Act comes with certain obligations relating to the security of the nation, personal information & other person’s information. There are 25 organizations which are exempted from the right to information under the “second schedule” of this Act. These include Central Economic Intelligence Bureau, Intelligence Agencies, etc., certain bodies which basically perform the research work with regard to the country’s security, special service bureau, narcotics control board.

• RTI Act is not applicable to “Dadra and Nagar Haveli & Lakshadweep”.
• The public authority has to give information within 30 days to the citizen
• If the authority denies providing any kind of information, then the person has the power to go to the appellate authority and can also go for the second appeal which falls under the “central information commission/state information commission”.

• Section 2(h): Public authorities mean all authorities and bodies under the union government, state government or local bodies. The civil societies that are substantially funded, directly or indirectly, by the public funds also fall within the ambit of RTI

• Section 4 1(b): Government has to maintain and proactively disclose information
• Section 6: Prescribes a simple procedure for securing information
• Section 7: Prescribes a time frame for providing information(s) by PIOs
• Section 8: Only minimum information exempted from disclosure
• Section 8 (1): mentions exemptions against furnishing information under the RTI Act
• Section 8 (2) : provides for disclosure of information exempted under the Official Secrets Act, 1923 if the larger public interest is served
• Section 19: Two-tier mechanism for appeal
• Section 20: Provides penalties in case of failure to provide information on time, incorrect, incomplete, or misleading or distorted information
• Section 23: Lower courts are barred from entertaining suits or applications. However, the writ jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of India and high courts under Articles 32 and 226 of the Constitution remains unaffected Recent Amendments

• The Right to Information (Amendment) Bill, 2013 removes political parties from the ambit of the definition of public authorities and hence from the purview of the RTI Act

• The draft provision 2017 lays out a simplistic procedure to deal with non-compliance. An application of non-compliance must be filed within three months from the date of non-compliance

• The 2019 amendment bill empowers the Central Government to prescribe the term of office for the commissioners as it may deem fit to the government and replace the fixed 5-year tenure

• One of the major set-back to the act is that poor record-keeping within the bureaucracy resulting in missing files

• Non-Standard forms for RTI application and no user guides for RTI implementation for people requesting information

• Awareness regarding types of organizations covered under the RTI Acts low

• There is a lack of staffing to run the information commissions

• Inconvenient payment channels for submission of application fees