Amendments can render Act toothless: activists

A group of activists has raised concerns over the government’s proposed amendments to the Right to Information (RTI) Act, saying they could limit the scope of the landmark legislation. The activists claimed that some of the proposed changes were tailor made for officials to reject RTI queries, which could pave the way for pressure tactics against RTI applicants.

“The government is trying to insert a provision that would allow an applicant to withdraw his or her query. This would just lead to RTI applicants being bullied into withdrawing their queries,” said advocate P Chandrabose, convenor of Voice of Indian, an activist and advocacy group.

Under the current set of rules, there is no provision for an applicant to withdraw an RTI query. This offers a certain amount of protection to the applicant against officials or stakeholders who might attempt to threaten the applicant to withdraw the query. This immunity, however small, could be lost, the activists fear.

They are also apprehensive over a change to the legislation that aims to limit the length of an RTI question to 250 words and also keeps all questions on one application pertinent to one subject only.