AG okayed CBI exemption from RTI purview

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) was exempted from the purview of the Right to Information (RTI) Act on the sole recommendation of attorney general Goolam Vahanvati.

The RTI exemption for the CBI announced by the central government on June 9 was in contradiction with suggestions made by the law ministry and also department of personnel and training (DoPT), the nodal agency for RTI implementation.

This was unearthed by a Hyderabad-based RTI activist, C J Karira, on Wednesday after he went through the files at the DoPT office in North Block, New Delhi. Karira was allowed to inspect the documents after he filed an RTI application seeking permission for the same. His contention was that "transparent functioning" of CBI was crucial given that it was probing the country’s biggest scams.

The activist took 50 minutes to go through the documents and was also allowed to make copies of pages that he felt were important. Karira found documents revealing DoPT’s denial to give CBI exemption from RTI on the grounds that it did not deal either with ‘intelligence’ or ‘security’ issues — the only two conditions that can make a government department RTI-proof.

"The response of the law ministry carried the suggestion that while the agency could be exempted from RTI, it should be answerable to queries on matters of administration, personnel, budget, etc," said Karira, quoting from the files he scanned on Wednesday.

However, the only document at DoPT that strongly recommended CBI’s exemption from RTI was an 11-page report by attorney general Vahanvati, a copy of which was taken by the activist and is in possession of TOI. According to the AG’s report, intelligence agencies are RTIproof because the information they gather is crucial to the nation’s security.

The report states: "While the main purpose of intelligence gathering and assessment is the prevention and occurrence of activities which could endanger the security of the country, it cannot be restricted only to gathering of intelligence prior to the happening of an event, but should extend to post-event intelligence gathered, which falls under investigation." It was soon after receiving this report that the government granted CBI the RTI ACT exemption.

CBI, too, used Section 24 of the RTI Act for the exemption, which states that "nothing contained in the act shall apply to the intelligence and security organizations established by the central government".