After colleague Veerappa Moily, Law Minister Salman Khurshid has expressed concern over the Right to Information (RTI) Act affecting government functioning.
Advocating a re-look at RTI, Khurshid said its misuse was affecting “institutional efficacy and efficiency”, with even the bureaucracy becoming reluctant to record its opinion. A “balance” has to be maintained between transparency and accountability and institutional efficiency, he said.
“There is a confidential communication between a minister and the Prime Minister and then there are further consultations before we bring something to the cabinet… If everything that I as a minister write to the Prime Minister comes out, then what is the point of writing to the PM confidentially? The same goes for the communication between the governor and chief minister. There is already a litigation regarding this in Goa… These issues have to be dispassionately examined as to at what stage such papers can be given. You cannot claim papers under the RTI which are part of internal communications ahead
of a cabinet decision until such time that a decision is finally taken,” Khurshid said in an interview to The Indian Express here today.
The minister, however, asserted that the government and Congress remained committed to “more transparency and accountability” and added that the concerns raised by him were “part of the experience of the RTI”, which is still being tested. He also clarified that there was no proposal to amend the RTI Act yet.
Khurshid and Corporate Affairs Minister Moily’s remarks, also in an interview to this paper, come in the wake of the controversy over a Finance Ministry note regarding Union minister P Chidambaram’s stance on 2G spectrum allocation, which had been obtained through RTI.
“There is a bona fide question about institutional efficacy and efficiency. Due to the use of the RTI in a wrongful way, a lot of impediments are being felt. Governors have expressed it; courts have expressed it. Undue inconvenience is caused by misuse of the RTI Act,” Khurshid said.
He said this could have a bearing on the functioning “between governors and chief ministers, prime minister and ministers”. The Law Minister said that due to RTI, there was “reluctance” on the part of civil servants “to record their opinion, right or wrong way”. “All that has to be kept in mind.”