Mumbai: Proposed changes against very essence of RTI Act, says Activists

The proposed amendment to the Right to Information Act under the ambit of the Data Protection Bill is a matter of concern say RTI activists They claim that the amendment if brought into force may derail the very purpose of RTI Act which is to empower citizens to bring transparency and accountability in the systemShailesh Gandhi RTI activist and former central information commissioner said ldquoThe proposed amendment would weaken citizensrsquo fundamental right to Information Most information relates to a person and can be classified as personal Most of the information to curb corruption and expose illegal acts would be blocked on the grounds that it belongs to a personrdquoldquoWith the wide definition suggested in the Data Protection Bill even companies and the State are included in the definition of lsquopersonrsquo Thus information related to a company or the government can also be denied on the grounds that it is personalrdquo explained ShaileshThe draft billIn a media release dated December 7 the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology MEITy announced the draft Digital Personal Data Protection Bill 2022 and invited feedback from the publicThe draft Bill sets out the rights and duties of the citizen digital nagrik and the obligations of the data fiduciary to use the collected data lawfully As part of the compliance framework it envisages the setting up of a Data Protection Board of India to determine noncompliance with the provisions of the draft Bill impose penalty for such noncompliance and perform other functions as the Central government may assign to itCurrently the Information Technology Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information Rules 2011 made by the Central government in exercise of its powers under the Information Technology Act 2000 provide security practices and procedures that a body corporate or any person collecting receiving possessing storing dealing or handling information on behalf of the body corporate is required to observe for protecting personal data of users These practices and procedures include the requirements that such body corporate or person publish on the website a policy for privacy and disclosure of personal information data or information to use information collected for the purpose for which it has been collected to keep it secure and to obtain prior permission of the information provider for disclosing personal dataAlso Read Human Rights courts where are they asks ActivistsLegal denial of informationldquoWhat was an illegal denial in many cases is being converted into a legal denial If this amendment is made the law will become a right to deny for public information officers who do not wish to give information We should object to this serious and damaging amendment and persuade the government to withdraw itrdquo said GandhiVenkatesh Nayak director of Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative New Delhi said ldquoThe two proposed amendments to the RTI Act are unnecessary and undesirable First it will have the effect of converting all personal information into a class of information that will be exempt by default This is completely against the vision of the RTI Act which recognises peoplersquos right to access personal information about other individuals that is of public interest Justice A P Shah Committee on Data Protection and Privacy had recommended that information accessible under RTI must not be denied under a data protection law The proposed amendment completely negates these important principlesrdquoldquoSecond the proposal to delete the proviso under Section 81 which encodes the democratic principle that whatever information legislators have the right to demand access to in Parliament or Assemblies people who elect them should also have the right to demand and obtain the same is completely antidemocratic The draft Bill violates Article 13 of the Constitution which prohibits the making of laws or taking of executive action which abridge abrogate diminish or curtail fundamental rights What MEITy seems to have ignored is that both personal data privacy and peoplersquos right to know about public interest matters are deemed to be part of Article 21 which guarantees the right to life and liberty according to multiple Supreme Court judgementsrdquo said VenkateshRTI a fundamental rightVihar Durve RTI activist from Pune said ldquoItrsquos unfortunate that there is once again an attempt to intervene with the basic structure of the Constitution Right to Information is a fundamental right which was introduced with an aim to bring accountability and transparency in larger public interest Now under the ambit of the Data Protection Bill the entire RTI Act and authorities under its ambit may have power to deny sharing any data or informationrdquo