CED
TEHELKA, NEW DELHI 26 AUG 2006

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Last Rites: Will RTI Die Prematurely?
Mihir Srivastava

Tehelka accessed three file notings so crucial to the essence of an Act the government wants amended


Groundswell opposition: activist Sandeep Pandey, who was on a week-long hunger strike protesting changes in RTI, with former PM VP Singh

Only file notings can tell who made a particular decision, what the reasons for it were, what the advice tendered by other officers was

Less than a year after passing the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the government wants to dilute its provisions , rendering it largely ineffective. Critics say that the proposed amendments to the Act will deny the citizen the right to hold the government accountable, negating the whole purpose behind the Act.

The amendment bill will be tabled in the Rajya Sabha next week, though many MPs have yet to receive a draft copy of the bill. “The information Act is being killed in the most secret fashion,” says veteran civil society activist Aruna Roy, who is leading the campaign to save the Act.

Opponents of the amendment are most critical of two provisions contained in it: the first stipulates that no information would be made available on any issue or project until the government has taken a final decision on it, and the second states that substantial ‘file notings’ will be made available by the government only for files on ‘social and development works’.

The government file has two parts to it: the right side has the papers under consideration, (PUCs) and the left side has the ‘notings’, the process through which opinions are written down, added to and approved or disapproved. A series of comments, these ‘notings’ chart the process of decision making. They reflect the deliberations on the PUCs.

All internal correspondence between officials in a ministry and a government department are carried out in the form of file notings. Only file notings can tell who made a paRTIcular decision, what were the reasons for it, what was the advice tendered by other concerned officers on the issue, and whether the advice of any officer was overruled to arrive at a paRTIcular decision.

Former Comptroller and Auditor General of India CG Somaih says that the impact of RTI Act on good governance is far reaching. “This Act helps the honest officer to make correct notings. In case of a senior officer pressurising his junior to write a paRTIcular noting, RTI acts as a shield to protect the latter. At the same time it exposes the corrupt officers,” he explains. Says former union home secretary Madhav Godbole: “In my 35 years of career you can bring in public domain any of the notings I made. Without making file notings, public accountability cannot be fixed.” “It is as simple as that: without the file noting RTI is of no use,” says KJ Rao, former observer in the election commission.

Tehelka looked at some cases, which show just how crucial file notings are to the relevance of RTI Act.

DELHI JAL BOARD PROJECT
File notings of VK Gupta, executive engineer, Delhi Jal Board and then additional ceo, Ranbir Singh, showed how the World Bank (WB) favoured Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) in awarding the contract to prepare the study for the Delhi Water and Sewage Project. Six finalists had to be short-listed for the bidding. But Gupta’s file notings show that PWC was in the short list even though there were nine companies ahead of it. To accommodate PWC, WB had stipulated that at least one of the finalists be from a developing country, a criteria only met by PWC.

NEPOTISM IN DJB
RTI also shed light on how Delhi government had appointed Pavan Ahluwalia, son of Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, as the project consultant for institutional development. No interview or adveRTIsement or the consideration of any other candidate for this position is mentioned in the notings. Minus the file notings, the only information available in the file is the appointment letter, a bio-data and the resignation letter of Pavan Ahluwalia.

DDA’S DUPLICITY

 In a more recent case, Madhu Bhaduri, retired Indian Foreign Service officer and an RTI activist, had filed an RTI application with Delhi Development Authority (DDA) to find out the status of relocation of JJ clusters to a resettlement colony in Kondli, in East Delhi. Says Bhaduri, “Assurances given by the DDA to the Delhi High Court are being violated and its instructions are not being followed. The land is not being passed on to the poor people it has been allotted, but instead is diverted to the land mafia for commercial purposes. We would have never come to know about it if we had not seen the file notings.”

Aruna Roy is hoping that the parliament will not pass the amendment. “People will not remember this government for bringing in this Act, if these amendments are made to this Act, the incumbent government will be remembered for killing the Act,” she says.


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<author>Mihir Srivastava</author>
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<pubDate>26/07/2006</pubDate>
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<entrydt>01/09/2006</entrydt>
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