[HumJanenge] Re: Wajahat Habibullah is biggest traitor of RTI

To SDS, for information

On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 8:30 AM, vishalkudchadkar <v_kudz@yahoo.com> wrote:

 

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1101215/jsp/nation/story_13302908.jsp

The National Advisory Council is set to oppose the Centre's proposal to dilute the Right to Information Act through a new set of rules.

A meeting of the panel's working group on transparency, accountability and governance — headed by RTI activist Aruna Roy — objected to the move to compress applications for information to only one matter at a time and set a word limit of 250.

The sub-committee that recently consulted RTI stakeholders and advocates, including former chief information commissioner Wajahat Habibullah and Nikhil Dey, convener, National Campaign for People's Right to Information, said the proposed change could lead to "misuse".

"The rule about a single subject will be open to arbitrariness and misuse as it is difficult to define," said a note it circulated and made available to The Telegraph.

"Limit of number of words is bad in law, unrealistic and will militate against rural applicants," the note added.

The panel said there was no evidence that the existing rules had created problems.

The NAC, headed by Sonia Gandhi, stressed that no appeal to the information commission should be rejected on the ground that the accompanying documents were not attested or the required papers were missing.

The note made it clear that withdrawal of appeals should not be allowed and neither should applications be allowed to die with the death of an applicant.

These arguments are expected to be taken up when the NAC next meets on December 21.