Good step taken by Mr. Gandhi.
It clearly shows Government's "frivolous and vexatious" intention of bringing unwarranted changes to act in the grab of strengthening the Act
Cheers,
Kapil
----- Original Message -----From: Anil kumarSent: Tuesday, February 02, 2010 8:34 AMSubject: [rti_india] Fw: [kria] Angry Information Commissioner releases minutes of RTI meeting on Act amendments
Angry Information Commissioner releases minutes of RTI meeting on Act
amendments
Government seems disrespectful in treating October meeting as a non-event:
Shailesh Gandhi
At meeting, majority of 60-odd Commissioners vetoed amendments proposed by
DoPT
Meeting concluded on understanding that DoPT would forward minutes to the
Commissioners
NEW DELHI: The minutes of the stormy October 14, 2009 meeting between
Central and State Information Commissioners and the Department of Personnel
and Training (DoPT) on the controversial issue of amendments to the Right To
Information Act, 2005 are now available for the common citizen to see.
Among other things, the DOPT proposed amendments to exclude from the Act
"frivolous and vexatious" complaints as well as "discussions/ consultations"
(previously known as file notings) preceding a government decision.
Curiously, the minutes were released on Monday, not by the Union Ministry of
Personnel, Public Grievances and Pension of which the DoPT is a part but by
Central Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi. Mr. Gandhi resorted to the
extreme step after being repeatedly fobbed off by the DoPT on the release of
the minutes.
The October 14 meeting concluded on the understanding that the DoPT would
forward the recorded minutes to the Information Commissioners (ICs). At the
meeting, the majority of the 60-odd ICs entirely vetoed the idea of
amendments, and only two officers agreed on the need to exclude "frivolous
and vexatious" complaints.
Speaking to The Hindu, Mr. Gandhi said the minutes formed an important part
of the record on the proposed amendments. In the event that the government
went ahead with the amendments, the minutes would prove that it had done so
by overruling the ICs. Mr. Gandhi said he and another IC, Satyanand Mishra,
sent several reminders to the DoPT to no avail.
Ten days ago, he wrote an e-mail to Shantanu Consul, Secretary of the DoPT,
in which Mr. Gandhi told him that it was disrespectful to the institution of
ICs if a meeting with "over 50 per cent of Information Commissioners across
the country" was treated so casually.
"I told him that the Government seemed to want to treat the meeting as a
non-event," Mr. Gandhi said.
When even this step did not produce the desired result, he went ahead and
released his own recorded minutes of the meeting.
Mr. Gandhi's minutes show that Union Minister for Personnel, Public
Grievances and Pension Prithiviraj Chavan proposed seven amendments in all,
arguing that these were needed to "strengthen the Act." The ICs pointed out
that five of these required change of rules at best and not full-fledged
amendments. The other two proposals were vetoed by all ICs present barring
two.
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