Two Former CICs Explain How Amendment To RTI Is Breaking Backbone Of Information Commissioners

The Union Government's plan to amend the Right to Information Act is mainly to alter the salary structure and tenure of Information Commissioners and weaken all the Information Commissioners and Commissions both at Centre and States. No consultation or debate Ignoring all these suggestions and discussions and report by Parliamentary Standing Committee, the Government says that RTI Act 2005 was hurriedly adopted by then Central Government, which is patently not true because there was wide ranging consultation before 2005, whereas there are no such deliberations or consultations before introducing RTI Bill, 2019 which is set to dilute the Act by impinging on Information Commissioners' Independence by tinkering with status, salary and autonomy. The sub-section of Section 13 of the Right to Information Act provides that the salaries and allowances and other terms and conditions of service of the chief information commissioner and information commissioners shall be same as that of the Chief Election Commissioner and Election Commissioners, respectively. Similarly, sub-section of Section 16 of the Act provides that the salaries and allowances and other terms and conditions of service of the state Chief information commissioner and State Information Commissioners shall be the same as that of the Election commissioner and the chief secretary to the state government, respectively. While the RTI Act 2005, recognizes the sovereign authority of states to select their information commissioners, the Bill of 2019 strangely does not allow states to decide their term, status and salary.