It was on October 12, 2005, that the landmark Right To Information Act came into full effect across India.
Distinguished bureaucrat Wajahat Habibullah, who served as the First Chief Information Commissioner of India from 2005-2010, spoke with Down To Earth about the legislation’s journey in these twenty years, attempts to weaken it and what its future holds.
Excerpts:
Bhagirath (B): It has been 20 years since the RTI Act was enacted. This law was brought with the objectives of transparency and accountability in mind. Has it been successful in fulfilling them? If yes, then to what extent?
Wajahat Habibullah (WH): The law has been successful in that it is widely known and used by all sections of society including those considered excluded: women and slum and forest-dwellers.
In this way, it has helped facilitate access to sanctioned facilities like widows’ pensions and hospital and school admissions for the poor, thus leading to growing and wider public participation. Every government agency now has a website, with information on policy and public facilities made accessible to all.
However, the Act’s efficacy has seen a decline as far as establishment of transparency and accountability of public authority are concerned.
B: A large number of commissioner posts are vacant in the Central Information Commission (CIC) and State Information Commissions. What are the reasons for this? How does the shortage of commissioners and staff affect the RTI?
WH: On January 7, 2025, the Supreme Court ruled on the RTI Act in an order that has invited widespread appreciation from activists. “An institution has been created,” Justice Surya Kant pronounced. He then addressed Additional Solicitor General Brijender Chahar, appearing for the Union of India, and pointedly asked: “What is the use of this institution if you do not have persons to perform duties under the law?”
We can only assume that lack of appointments to posts stems from the present government’s policy of strangling all autonomous bodies, particularly those that demand accountability.
Starved of leadership, as in the case of information commissioners in the CIC and State Information Commissions, the Union Government has assumed major responsibility.
The government’s own prescribed process of appointment is scarcely followed, leaving information commissions, the final court of appeal under the law, vacant and hence ineffectual. The inevitable consequence is the piling up of arrears and nullification of the RTI Act in states where positions of commissioners are altogether vacant.
Bhagirath: Recently, the RTI has been amended under the guise of the DPDP (Digital Personal Data Protection) Act. How will the current amendment affect the RTI?
WH: Hitherto, India had no law protecting privacy. I, as Chief Information Commissioner, had repeatedly held privacy as a basic right of a citizen in a democracy just like the right to information.
The RTI Act has provision for protection of privacy. But India had no law defining what is meant by ‘privacy’. During my tour of duty as Chief Information Commissioner, I had, with the approval of the judiciary, relied upon the UK Data Protection Act to ensure that the disclosure of private information was made only as allowed for under the RTI Act.
But the amendment of the RTI Act to bring it in conformity with the DPDP Act has had the effect of overriding it (the RTI Act) on grounds of privacy. This, according to RTI campaigner and former information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi, has ‘killed’ the Act.
This amendment was unnecessary, given that the RTI Act provided for protection of privacy. But the amendment has had the effect of making the right to privacy an absolute right, denying the right to information in a host of matters. This will have ramifications for personal information and also have a bearing on public interest.
B: Today, common citizens complain that they do not get the information sought under the RTI Act. Instead, they get misleading information or are refused information. What are the reasons for this state of affairs? Do authorities no longer bother about the RTI Act? If yes, why?
WH: This question refers to a perception that can be answered only by a participant in the process of giving and acquiring information, not by a former decision-maker like me, seated on the other side of the Bench.
But my answer to the earlier questions should help affirm doubts regarding the effectiveness of the RTI machinery in matters where there is suspicion of corruption or political skullduggery.
B: The right to information also gives the right to inspect and take samples. In rural areas, social auditing of government work was also done under the RTI Act. Are these provisions still being used? If there has been a decrease in this, what are the reasons for it?
WH: No recent cases of inspections and sampling of the kind you mention has recently featured in the press. That said, it is indeed a vital element of the law, on which I personally, together with many of my contemporaries both in the CIC and the State Information Commissions, have ruled repeatedly. However, exact statistics of this nature are not known to me to enable comment. I suggest that you refer to the CIC website, which is richly supplied.
B: Do you feel that the right to information has weakened in the last 20 years? If yes, what are the reasons for this and who can be held responsible for this?
WH: As you will see from my responses to other questions some aspects of the RTI Act, particularly on the issue of assigning accountability, have become less effective. Also, there are instances in government of seeking to treat exercise of RTI by government employees as ‘acts of indiscipline’. This is because the Act is not supported by an effective grievance redressal mechanism like a Whistleblowers’ Act/ or effective intervention by government even when corruption is clearly exposed by information provided. The RTI Act is an instrument simply to provide information; it is not an anticorruption or indeed a law for grievance redressal. The bureaucratic temper has inevitably found ways to accommodate the law within its function without exposing what were its basic vulnerabilities.
B: Right to Information is the result of a long movement. Do you think that a movement is needed now to save it?
WH: The RTI, as an instrument of accountability, should have been the State’s principal asset in providing good governance, or governance that addresses what the public perceives as its principal needs, which has been acknowledged by no less a personage than Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself while addressing an annual convention of information commissioners. To achieve that objective, it is required that government use the law as a means of determining policy and the public look upon the law not as a weapon to debilitate governance but an instrument to strengthen it, which means simply better service to the citizen.
B: In conclusion, where do you see the Right to Information’s standing in the last 20 years?
WH: The RTI Act has the potential to raise India to the level of becoming not only the world’s largest but, together with full decentralisation as envisaged in the 73rd and 74th Amendments to the Constitution of India, the world’s foremost democracy in terms of personal freedom and quality of life.