Secrets and Laws

The government could do well to listen to the chief information commissioner Wajahat Habibullah on the Official Secrets Act. When there is a direct conflict between the OSA and the Right to Information Act, it is the latter that prevails, says Habibullah. Now, the CIC is only reiterating a provision in the RTI Act.

The secrets Act, prepared in 1923, was an imperial tool meant to serve the interests of a colonial enterprise. It served its purpose under the colonial administration. Unfortunately, it has had a life too long. Such an Act has no place in a democracy and ought to have been repealed right after independence. Then why has it been in circulation all this while? Simple. Bureaucrats love it and their political bosses find it a convenient tool to guard their interests.

That seems to be the case even after the RTI Act was legislated in 2005. Recently, the OSA was invoked against a former RAW official for writing about corruption in the country's premier investigating agency. Of course, a lot of material that the RAW handles could be considered classified information. But what is classified about corruption? If a retired public official seeks to blow the lid on corruption in the organisation he has worked, why do we scream that official secrets have been compromised? The whistle-blower is necessary and has an important role in democracy. We actually need a law to protect the whistle-blower, not archaic laws that encourage secrecy in the conduct of public affairs.

The RTI Act clearly states that it overrides the OSA and the Second Administrative Reforms Commission recently asked for scrapping it. No one thinks that official secrets need not be guarded, but the provisions of RTI Act are sufficient to protect the interests of citizens. The crucial difference between the OSA and the RTI Act is that the latter privileges ‘the right of the citizen to know' over the public officials' ‘right to secrecy'. This includes even personal information concerning public officials if ‘public interest in disclosure outweighs the harm to protected interests'. No cause for complaint here since this is how it ought to be in a democracy.

The government should now be concerned about giving teeth to the RTI Act. The Act is meant to give voice to the civil society and create a watchdog independent of the state. That's possible only if information commissions are representative of the diversity in society. At the moment, information commissions, in states as well as at the Centre, have become parking lots for retired bureaucrats. That defeats the purpose and the mandate of the institution. These commissions should not become the exclusive domain of babus, but include other professionals also, as the Act envisages. Meanwhile, let us bury the OSA for good.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Secrets_and_Laws/articleshow/2464724.cms