The Clause-5 (a) of the Draft Bill, which prohibits the disclose of information on the grounds of integrity, security, sovereignty or international relations of the State is too broad, under which any request for information can be turned down by the Competent Authority. For instance, in Rajasthan, when the common people wanted to inspect or see some records or accounts of the public works, the officials refused to show them on the spacious grounds of this Sub-clause. So this Sub-clause ( 5 a.) may be further specified.
The provision under the next Sub-Clause ( 5 b. ) in para 2, which says that 'the papers containing the advice, opinion, recommendations or minutes submitted to the Governor.and any information the disclosure of which would prejudicially affect the conduct of the Centre -State relations, including the information exchanged in confidence between the Centre and the Government or any of their authorities or agencies' are excluded from the preview of the Act is contradictory to the provision made under Sub-Clause ( 5 e) in Para 2, that says that the information which cannot be refused to the State Legislature cannot be denied to any person. As is well known, most of the notes or letters which are submitted to the Governor by the Government are also shared with the members of legislature. So this Sub-Clause ( 5 b Para 2) should be deleted.
On the Procedure of disposal of application for information (Clause 6), I would like to say that the Competent Authority should to start with, issue an acknowledgment of the receipt of an application to the applicant, before doing anything to accept or reject it. Such an acknowledgement would help the applicant to pursue his case further irrespective of whether his application is accepted or rejected by the Competent Authority. So the provision of issuing acknowledgement of the application may be added to Clause 6.
The provision in Para 2 of Clause 6 says that an officer shall take 30 days even to reject an application for information. 30 working days for rejecting an application is too long a time. The time period for rejecting an application should be reduced to 15 or 20 in Clause 6 Para 2. And under the same Clause, it should be added that in case of life and liberty, the time period to be taken for rejecting an application should be within 24 to 48 hours.
Regarding the Appeal ( Clause 7), it was felt in the State-level Consultation held at CYSD prior to the issue of this Draft Bill that,there should be some sort of an independent appellate authority at different levels including the District and Panchayat level, to whom the people shall have access and where the grievances against officials like B.D.O. & Tahasildar can be heard and disposed of
There is a provision for suo moto disclosure of information as an Obligation of Competent Authorities in Clause 8. In our view, the Competent authorities should make suo moto disclosure of such essential information like funds they receive and utilize periodically, so that people get informed about all this. The same should be the practice of all public authorities including the NGOs. We at CYSD which is an NGO put all our important information like the receipt and utilization of funds regularly on the Website.
In the provision for Penalty ( Clause 9), there is no mention as to who shall pay the penalty, the concerned information officer personally or his Department. It should be specified. Again, the Draft Bill provides for Rs.200/- per day as penalty for delay or denial. But a larger amount than this should be charged for providing misleading information by an officer to the public.
A new provision on Compensation may be added to the draft Bill. This suggestion given by Mr.Behera came up in course of the CYSD-hosted Consultation, and then in the Care-organised Consultation. Compensation is to be paid to the citizen, who undertook a lot of pains to get the desired information but couldn't get it and was harassed in the end. There are other laws in the country, which compensate the victims or the losers in a deal.
On the State Council for Right to Information ( Clause 10), I feel that it should not be headed by a Minister as its Chairman. Because by the time the Minister assumes his office, his Ministry might go and the entire Council would be dissolved.So the Council should be a statutory body having a fixed tenure and adequate powers for supervising the departments of State Government in respect of implementation of the RTI Act..
The Act should contain a provision for publicizing and informing the people about its provisions.