‘RTI used as a tool not to give information’

Having handled the drafts of the transparency legislation as Secretary,Department of Personnel,Tewari knows the RTI Act backwards. “Secrecy is embedded in the minds of civil servants and today,the RTI is being used as a tool not to give information. This is something that needs to be urgently breached,” he told The Indian Express.

Elaborating,Tewari said,“For every text which reads ‘if you use RTI,will will give you information’,there is a sub-text stating,‘no information will be given if you don’t use RTI.’ Everyone wants to maintain secrecy because they don’t know how he will be hit by transparency.”

On the response of government officials to the transparency regime,Tewari said that unfortunately,the Commission had observed a trend of the civil servants using the RTI Act to save themselves from disciplinary and vigilance inquiries. “If we make an analysis,almost 15 per cent cases we are hearing can fall in this category. The trend is rampant in PSU’s and even in ministries like Home and DoPT,” he informed. “Civil servants are using the Act to deflect and stall proceedings against them and we have to find a way out of this pattern.”

The CIC informed that there are two important initiatives he has taken to encourage institutional transparency. The first was his proposal — sent to government about a year ago — for all departments to prepare and publicise its “negative list” of all confidential material and thus,bring the vast majority of information they are holding into public purview. “I have not yet got a response on my proposal,but this is something that will force departments to improve their record management systems,say,like the government of Andhra Pradesh has done.”

The other project that Tewari hopes to complete in his tenure is the tabulation and analysis of CIC judgments and list the categories of information which have already been thrown open to applicants. “Once this information and pattern of CIC rulings is available to Information Officers,they will tend to give out more information to RTI applicants and therefore,number of appeals will come down,” he pointed out.

On the subject of a vast majority of ex-bureaucrats being appointed as CIC’s and IC’s in the states,Tewari said that while being a bureaucrat should not be a disqualification for being appointed to the posts,the appointments should ideally,be spread out,for instance,to include academics and even journalists. “It is the political class which has to understand the importance of these appointments,” he asserted. “While a few state governments are careful about whom they pick,I am unconvinced about the appointments made in some states. The selection could have been a lot better.”