RTI draft rules: Govt of India seeking to "coopt" Central Information Commission, wants to appoint its secretary

Aruna Roy

By A Representative
The National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information (NCPRI), whose campaign pushed India towards the Right to Information (RTI) Act in 2005, has suggested that the recently-proposed RTI draft rules virtually proposes to allow the Government of India (GoI) to coopt the Central Information Commission (CIC), the RTI watchdog of GoI.
Taking strong exception, in this context, to the proposed appointment of secretary to the CIC by the GoI in the new draft rules, NCPRI says, they “undermine the authority of the CIC by giving the Central Government the power of appointing the secretary to the CIC.”
NCPRI insists, “The CIC should have the freedom to appoint officers of its choice through a transparent process”, adding, “secretary” to CIC should mean “an officer so appointed by the CIC”, adding, the following words should inserted into the new rules: “The CIC shall appoint an officer not below the rank of Additional Secretary to the Government of India as Secretary to the Commission.”
NCPRI is led, among others, by well-known social activists Aruna Roy, who was a member of the National Advisory Council (NAC) chaired by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, till May 2013, when she resigned over non-implementation of NAC recommendation to implement minimum wages for work offered under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA).
Taking exception to yet another change, NCPRI believes that the requirement for an aggrieved person to file an appeal to the CIC – online or offline – accompanied “duly authenticated and verified” documents, is strange, particularly when “anywhere between 40 and 60 lakh RTI applications “are filed every year in India” and majority of them are by “the poor and marginalized”.
Criticizing the authentication requirement for not being “people-friendly” and “burdened with legalistic procedures”, NCPRI says, the “duly authenticated and verified” requirement should be “limited to self-attestation by the appellant.”
Objecting to the rule allowing RTI appeals to be returned to the applicants because of certain deficiencies, NCPRI says, “People, especially the marginalised, reach CIC after a lot of hardship and a long wait”, and therefore, the CIC should “facilitate and assist people in the process of registering their appeals, rather than summarily returning them due to a deficiency.”
Regarding the proposed rule allowing appellants to withdraw their appeals, NCPRI says, this appears “beyond the law”, as “given the Indian reality where RTI applicants are at times harassed, threatened, physically attacked or even killed, such provisions will provide a perverse incentive to vested interests to silence the information seeker through coercion or physical harm.”
Also rejecting the proposal to allow CIC to drop the pleas if the applicant dies, NCPRI quotes CIC resolution dated September 13, 2011, which says, “If it receives a complaint regarding assault or murder of an information seeker, it will examine the pending RTI applications of the victim and order the concerned department(s) to publish the requested information suo motu on their website as per the provisions of law.”
Critical of such hurdles for seeking information, NCPRI says, “Despite more than 11 years of the implementation of the RTI Act in India, in most public authorities no mechanism to assist information seekers has been put in place. Therefore, it is suggested that Information and Facilitation Centres be set up in each public authority.”
Referring to the pleas related to cases of life and liberty, which are heard within 48 hours, NCPRI insists, “There is no concomitant time-frame for disposal of first appeal, second appeal or complaints in cases where information is not provided within 48 hours”, insisting, “Appropriate rules should be framed with a clearly defined procedure and time frame.”

Comments

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Was Netaji forced to alter face, die in obscurity in USSR in 1975? Was he so meek?

By Rajiv Shah This should sound almost hilarious. Not only did Subhas Chandra Bose not die in a plane crash in Taipei, nor was he the mysterious Gumnami Baba who reportedly passed away on 16 September 1985 in Ayodhya, but we are now told that he actually died in 1975—date unknown—“in oblivion” somewhere in the former Soviet Union. Which city? Moscow? No one seems to know.

Love letters in a lifelong war: Babusha Kohli’s resistance in verse

By Ravi Ranjan* “War does not determine who is right—only who is left.” Bertrand Russell’s words echo hauntingly in our times, and few contemporary Hindi poets embody this truth as profoundly as Babusha Kohli. Emerging from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, Kohli has carved a unique space in literature by weaving together tenderness, protest, and philosophy across poetry, prose, and cinema. Her work is not merely artistic expression—it is resistance, refuge, and a call for peace.

Authoritarian destruction of the public sphere in Ecuador: Trumpism in action?

By Pilar Troya Fernández The situation in Ecuador under Daniel Noboa's government is one of authoritarianism advancing on several fronts simultaneously to consolidate neoliberalism and total submission to the US international agenda. These are not isolated measures, but rather a coordinated strategy that combines job insecurity, the dismantling of the welfare state, unrestricted access to mining, the continuation of oil exploitation without environmental considerations, the centralization of power through the financial suffocation of local governments, and the systematic criminalization of all forms of opposition and popular organization.

The golden crop: How turmeric is transforming women's lives in tribal India

By Vikas Meshram* When the lush green fields of turmeric sway in the tribal belt of southern Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat, it is not merely a spice crop — it is the golden glow of self-reliance. In villages where even basic spices once had to be bought from the market, the very soil today is yielding a prosperity that has transformed the lives of thousands of families. At the heart of this transformation is the initiative of Vaagdhara, which has linked turmeric with livelihoods, nutrition, and village self-governance — gram swaraj.

Echoes of Vietnam and Chile: The devastating cost of the I-A Axis in Iran

By Ram Puniyani The recent joint military actions by Israel and the United States against Iran have been devastating. Like all wars, this conflict is brutal to its core, leaving a trail of human suffering in its wake. The stated pretext for this aggression—the brutality of the Ayatollah Khamenei regime and its nuclear ambitions—clashes sharply with the reality of the diplomatic landscape. Iran had expressed a willingness to remain at the negotiating table, signaling a readiness to concede points emerging from dialogue.

Buddhist shrines were 'massively destroyed' by Brahmanical rulers: Historian DN Jha

Nalanda mahavihara By Rajiv Shah Prominent historian DN Jha, an expert in India's ancient and medieval past, in his new book , "Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History", in a sharp critique of "Hindutva ideologues", who look at the ancient period of Indian history as "a golden age marked by social harmony, devoid of any religious violence", has said, "Demolition and desecration of rival religious establishments, and the appropriation of their idols, was not uncommon in India before the advent of Islam".

The price of silence: Why Modi won’t follow Shastri, appeal for sacrifice

By Arundhati Dhuru, Sandeep Pandey* In 1965, as India grappled with war and a crippling food crisis, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri faced a United States that used wheat shipments under the PL-480 agreement as a lever to dictate Indian foreign policy. Shastri’s response remains legendary: he appealed to the nation to skip one meal a day. Millions of middle-class households complied, choosing temporary hunger over the sacrifice of national dignity. Today, India faces a modern equivalent in the energy sector, yet the leadership’s response stands in stark contrast to that era of self-reliance.

False claim? What Venezuela is witnessing is not surrender but a tactical retreat

By Manolo De Los Santos The early morning hours of January 3, 2026, marked an inflection point in Venezuela and Latin America’s centuries-long struggle for self-determination and independence. Operation Absolute Resolve, ordered by the Trump administration, constituted the most brutal and direct military assault on a sovereign state in the region in recent memory. In a shocking operation that left hundreds dead, President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores were illegally kidnapped from Venezuelan soil and transported to the United States, where they now face fabricated charges in a New York federal detention facility. In the two months since this act of war, a torrent of speculation has emerged from so-called experts and pundits across the political spectrum. This has followed three main lines: One . The operation’s success indicated treason at the highest levels of the Bolivarian Revolution. Two . Acting President Delcy Rodríguez and the remaining leadership have abandone...

Search This Blog