The Government of Orissa, which talked of introducing a Right to Information legislation in the State for quite some months now, has at last come forward with a Draft-Bill for Right to Information Act 2002, likely to be presented before the Orissa Legislative Assembly in the coming monsoon session. If it comes through as envisaged, it would certainly prove a milestone on the path of an open and transparent, accountable and responsive system of governance, which both people and State of Orissa are in dire need of. More over, by doing so, Orissa shall join the comity of selected States of India ( Tamilnadu, Goa, Maharastra, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh) , where a similar instrument of governance for  ensuring of people's right of access to information has already been effected either in the form of a legislative enactment or administrative direction in course of last five years.

Needless to say, the proposed Draft Bill on Orissa Right to Information Act 2002 is a matter of crucial interest for every person concerned with the governance of the State.

But there is a writing on the wall too. As the experience of Tamilnadu, the first State of India to pioneer the enactment of such a 'progressive' legislation, has clearly borne out, a Right to Information Act, if not properly formulated following a thorough-going public debate, might turn just into its diametrical opposite i.e. Right to No Information Act. Back home, Orissa has also a similar experience of transparency exercises at Government level turning into a grand fiasco. A fact least known but incontrovertible is that Orissa is one of the pioneer States in India, where Right to Information was introduced for the entire three-tier Panchayati Raj system back in 1997, of course not through a legislation but through administrative orders of the State Government. The said Order of 1997, which was reiterated intermittently every year upto 1997 by the Department of Panchayati Raj through periodical circulars, had categorically stipulated that every villager was entitled to receive maximum within a week any sort of information relating to the affairs of Panchayati Raj right from Gram Panchayat upto Zilla Parishad level, from the elected Panchayati Raj functionaries and as well from their corresponding Government Officials, by paying only Rs.2/- per page of the information sought. The fate of such well meaning administrative orders of the government is too well known for any analysis here. Let alone the implementation of these administrative orders, the very circulars bearing the said orders were not at all circulated to the Panchayat functionaries and staff beyond the Block level except in a miniscule of cases.

The people therefore need to examine each of the provisions, including its very wording of the Draft Bill on Orissa Right to Information Act 2002, now being proposed by the Government. Concurrently, the Government need to ensure necessary space for a wide-scale public debate over the proposed Draft Bill by way of using all mass media of print and electronic communication along with the existing administrative machinery of dissemination from Capital down to Gram Sabha level under their command, before it is presented in the Orissa Legislative Assembly.

Thus both the content of the Draft Bill i.e. what is there inside it including the very comma, full stop etc, and the procedure of its formulation and enactment i.e. who has framed it , how has it been framed, whether the common people for whom it is meant were made aware of its detail and given the opportunity to debate on it and the like, are of critical significance, ignoring of which might land the State and people of Orissa in a state of double jeopardy, as has been the case in Tamilnadu.

As a matter of fact, long before the Government of Orissa pronounced their contemplation to introduce a Right to Information legislation in the State, there were a series of civil society initiatives to push forward its concept on different occasions and in different fora. While it is not possible to document all such initiatives, those ones which were held in course of the last one and half years and where the issues relating to right to information were discussed in some way or the other are worth mentioning.

In course of such civil society initiatives for a pro-transparency legislation, the first version of the Citizens' Draft Bill on Orissa Right to Information Act 2001 took shape, about a year ago in early July 2001. The Citizens' Draft Bill was formulated outside the precincts of the Government, by some citizens on their own initiative and is therefore named so The layout and text of the said Draft Bill, to start with were largely based on a comparative study of the transparency legislations/administrative orders made in some States of the country, coupled with particular concerns arising out of the specific scenario of Orissa's information regime. The Draft Bill was submitted to the Chief Minister, Orissa in October 2001 along with a few suggestions for promoting it (Vide Speed Post Letter Dated 15.10.2001) , who in reply promptly congratulated its author through Email ( Vide Email from CM Office dated 17.10.2001), saying that the whole matter was referred to the Secretary Department of Information and Public Relations, Orissa for further necessary action. Since then there have been several deliberations on the Right to Information in general and on the Citizens' Draft Bill in particular in course of seminars, workshops and consultation meets etc. held in different parts of the State on the initiative of various civil society groups involving people from cross sections of the society, such as judges, lawyers, academia, bureaucrats, social workers, women activists, media persons, technocrats, litterateurs, legislators and the like, that cut across social and political ideologies and persuasions. Dialogue was also held with informed individuals in both government and non-government sectors on the content of the Citizens' Draft Bill and need for it's further revision, so as to make it both ideal from public interest view point and acceptable to the Government of the day. As the deliberations progressed, both the content and expression of the Citizens' Draft Bill went on changing too. The latest version of the Citizens' Draft Bill on Orissa RTI Act 2002 which is reproduced in course of this web page, though essentially similar to its original edition, differs however from the latter in some respects. And it was bound to be so. More over, in days to come, to-day's version is also likely to register further changes to accommodate the new amendments that would be suggested by the interested respondents from various quarters. 

The purpose of reproducing the Citizens' Draft Bill alongside of the Government proposed Draft Bill here is to help the public at large, who are not conversant with the nitty-gritty or the jargons of law, to find out quickly suitable words or expressions to describe what they might be thinking in terms of new inputs to the Government proposed Draft Bill.

A quick glance at the Citizens' Draft Bill vis-a-vis the Govt. proposed Draft Bill brings forth the following salient provisions of the former which need be incorporated in to the body of the latter at appropriate places: 

• Political parties registered with Election Commission functioning in the State of Orissa and Judicial Administration along with tribunals and Quasi-Judicial bodies in the State of Orissa to be covered inter alia under the purview of  'Public Authority'  in the Sub-Section of the Section-2 Definitions of the Government Proposed Draft Bill.
• The Institution of Lokpal, as it stands today is not well known to the people at large with regard to its location, accessibility, functions and penal/ judicial powers. So the appeal by the aggrieved information seeker against the orders passed by the Public Authority should lie before the State Administrative Tribunal or any of its regional branches, in place of Lokpal, for the obvious reason that the STA is already working as the legal forum for adjudicating the cases relating to Public Servant Conduct Rules. Thus, necessary change is called for in the Section-7 Appeals of the Government Proposed Draft Bill.
• A new Section  i.e. Section-10 Compensation is to be added to the Government Proposed Draft Bill to provide for compensation to be paid to the information seeking citizen, who has been unjustly denied information or was served with wrongful information by the concerned Public Authority. Thus, the total number of Sections of the Government Proposed Draft Bill becomes 12 in place of 11.            

Critiquing the Government Proposed Draft Bill

To facilitate and quicken the process of critically reflecting on the Section wise contents and expressions of  the Government Proposed Draft Bill at the level of  both Government officials and public at large, a separate document entitled 'Debugging the Draft Bill on Orissa Right to Information Act 2002, proposed by the Dept. of I & PR, Govt. of Orissa' has been placed here, which may be taken as a point of reference for critiquing the Government proposed Draft Bill.          

RTI and Discourse on Administrative and Fiscal Reforms

As is well known among the informed circles, a legislation on RTI is not an end in itself, but one of the tools, a very critical one though,  for bringing about a transparent, responsive and accountable system of governance. As a matter of fact, when the Working Group appointed by  Government of India submitted their Report in 1997 recommending the enactment of a Freedom of Information Bill, they styled their Report as "Towards Open and Transparent Government" While a Central Bill on Freedom of Information was tabled in Parliament in July 2000 and remains pending since then, the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution set up on 23rd February 2000 submitted their Report to the Prime Minister on last May 31, 2002. The Report of the National Commission has not only pleaded for RTI legislation at all levels, but also categorically underlined the need for drastic administrative and fiscal reforms in the system of governance, without which the RTI would remain in pen and paper like plethora of legislations, the country is presently burdened with. One can see therefore a whole lot of issues along with RTI are being debated across the nation including Orissa too, under the generic expression Administrative and Fiscal Reforms. With the belief that the debate around RTI and a discourse on Administrative and Fiscal Reforms are complementary to each other, the present Web Page while putting its current focus on RTI, would also encourage a citizens' discourse on AFR in due course.       

At the present stage, the basic goal of the current web page is therefore to facilitate the process of the ongoing public debate over the proposed Draft Bill for Orissa Right to Information Act 2002 in the overall context of reforming the governance as a whole from the citizens' angle, and carry it forward until it reaches its logical culmination i.e enactment of a suitable Draft Bill on RTI in the Orissa Legislative Assembly along with progress of concomitant administrative and fiscal reforms.  To be more specific, the Web Page would address to the following objectives,

1. To offer an open ended electronic platform to all the persons whosoever be interested to contribute to the process of making of an ideal and viable Draft Bill before it is presented to the Orissa Legislative Assembly,
2. To gather and document the opinions and amendments suggested by all interested respondents and pass them on to various quarters, which are exercising over the making of the Draft Bill including the Government of Orissa, which is currently active for its legislative enactment,
3. To facilitate networking among the interested individuals, groups and agencies in both private and Government sectors,
4. To relate the discourse on Right to Information to the ongoing debate on other cardinal issues of an open, responsive and accountable governance, such as the fiscal and administrative reforms in the State of Orissa in particular and in the country of India in general, and above all,
5.  To facilitate an interfacing of the interested people of Orissa with those of other parts of the country and outside, on the whole lot of issues concerning the democratization of governance in tune with legitimate aspirations of the people.

Request to the Visitors  

The author of the web page assures to pass on all the comments  received from the respondents, of course after due editing, to the concerned Government Authorities, especially the Dept. of  Information and Public Relations, Orissa who are now busy over finalizing the Draft Bill on Orissa Right to Information Act 2002.     

Declaration:

The author of the present web page is a self-appointed activist for the Citizens' Draft Bill on Orissa Right to Information Act 2002.The web page has been designed by Mr. Jagannath Dalai and  necessary resources for the same provided by Project Swarajya at Cuttack.