Well Done, CIC

Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) Wajahat Habibullah can now be directly approached if the information sought ‘‘will directly impact the life or liberty of a private citizen’’. All one has to do is send an e-mail to whabibullah@nic.in. ‘‘If the information sought will impact the life or liberty of a private citizen, he or she has to just send an e-mail to me or my fellow information commissioners with all the necessary details and the name of the government department. We will make sure that the public authority concerned responds within 48 hours,’’ Mr Habibullah told the media the other day. In a January 19 order too, he has harped on the CIC’s ‘‘online helpline’’ where he has observed that ‘‘Information Commissioners or the Chief Information Commissioner may treat e-mail messages as complaints if the information sought concerns the life or liberty of a person’’. The normal practice so far has been different and cumbersome. An applicant would wait for at least 30 days to get a nod from the Public Information Officer (PIO) of the department concerned as to whether it had the information that was being sought. If dissatisfied with the authority’s response, the applicant would file an appeal before an appellate authority, but within the same department. The applicant could approach the CIC — officially ‘‘a second appellate authority’’ — only as a last resort. Now, as Mr Habibullah has made it clear, ‘‘in cases of life and liberty, all the applicant has to do is wait for 48 hours after filing a complaint with the PIO and then directly approach the CIC via online bypassing the higher authority in the government.’’ He has elaborated thus: ‘‘On receiving the e-mail, the Commission will immediately intimate the PIO of the public authority to respond within 48 hours as to why information was denied to the applicant in the first place. If the reply is found unreasonable, an appropriate penalty will be levied on the officer.’’ This of course is in accordance with the legislative intent of Section 6 of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005, which gives a citizen an option to either make his request in writing or ‘‘through electronic means in English or Hindi or in the official language of an area’’.

The CIC certainly deserves adulation for making a radical shift in the RTI regime of the country. Such pro-people initiatives strengthen the foundation of democracy, whose quintessence ought to be transparency and the right of the people to know how the powers-that-be, who they elect, go about in the process of decision-making. The RTI Act is itself a radical democratic initiative, but what is worrying is the reluctance of government departments (read ‘‘their political and bureaucratic bosses’’) to reveal themselves in the public domain because there are too many things shadowy about their functioning — which runs counter to the spirit of democracy. The RTI Act seeks to undo it all by giving the people the right to seek information that concerns them and the very fact of democracy. Now that the CIC can be directly approached in case the information sought has an impact on the life or liberty of a person, a new RTI beginning has been heralded in the country.

However, there is need for RTI awareness and activism. People should seek more and more information from the government under the provisions of the RTI Act. They should thus force the government to be absolutely transparent. The CIC has done its job. It is now for the people to contribute to that RTI paradigm by filing different RTI applications to know how the government has carried itself — whether in the interest of the country’s citizens or in the interest of self-serving politics. This is the right time to act in the service of democracy.
source: the sentinel assam