In the modern world, the working of everything depends upon the information. The information talked about is any information which may be important for an individual, group, enterprise, industry, or even a whole country. Every country has its own set of rules and procedures to seek this information and in India seeking of information is given to every citizen as a right provided by right to information act(RTI), 2005.
By term right to information one can easily understand that this right is of accessing information. Right to information is a right which entitles all the citizens of the country to have the information of the working of the government. For example, if a citizen wishes to ask the government about some payments and status of a project for development of the country this right entitles them to do so. This right to information is governed by the Right to Information Act (RTI) 2005. Act by the Parliament of India provides for setting out the practical regime of right to information for citizens to access to information under the control of public authorities, in order to promote transparency and accountability in the working of every public authority, the constitution of a Central Information Commission and State Information Commissions and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto. Right to Information Act 2005 mandates timely response to citizen requests for government information.
But before Right to Information act, 2015 there was a legislation known as Freedom of information legislation. During the 1990’s the citizens in the country if wanted some piece of information from their government they have to file the litigation in high court or supreme court for the information which makes the court overburdened for by more litigations even for the simple work and the there was a lengthy process for obtaining the information and the supreme also took interest in giving the citizens to give information which they desired. In 2002, the government passed the freedom of information legislation by which the citizens have freedom to demand information from the government.
The government appointed a working group under H. D. Shourie commitee and assigned it the task of drafting legislation. The Shourie draft, was the basis for the Freedom of Information Bill, 2000 which eventually became law under the Freedom of Information Act, 2002.
This Act was severely criticized for permitting too many exemptions, not only under the standard grounds of national security and sovereignty, but also for requests that would involve "disproportionate diversion of the resources of a public authority". There was no upper limit on the charges that could be levied. There were no penalties. The Act was passed by Parliament, but was never notified, so it did not attain legal force.
The exemptions which were critized in the act are mentioned in the sections 8 to section 11 where many exemptions to freedom of information are given to protect the information of the government.
Now coming Back to the RTI act and quoting the head of the same "to provide for setting out the practical regime of right to information for citizens" it can be observed that the according to the act the act gives the citizen “the power for setting out the practical regime” and ask the government about all the activities it does so that the citizens know what their representatives are doing or they know in what public company they can invest which will give them appropriate returns and it can only be possible if the citizens have power to demand the information they need from the company, and this power is given by the right to information act. The citizens are entitled by the law and under the provisions of the Act, any citizen may request information from a "public authority" (a body of Government or "instrumentality of State") which is required to reply as quickly as possible or within thirty days. The Act also requires every public authority to computerize their records for wide dissemination and to proactively certain categories of information so that the citizens need minimum recourse to request for information formally.
Democracy is rule of the people, for the people and by the people. Therefore, in democracy, an informed citizenry and transparency of information which are vital to its functioning and also to contain corruption and to hold Governments and their instrumentalities accountable to the governed are required. Whereas, Private bodies or corporations are not within the ambit of the act directly. But in some cases the information can be accessed under any other law in force by a public authority and the information can be requested for. In a landmark case, Sarabjit Roy vs. DERC “the central authority can also reaffirm that privatized public utility companies continue to be within RTI act”. The act also explicitly overrides the official secrets Act, 1923 and other laws in force for the protection of information as secrets.
There is an act called official secrets act(OSA), 1923 which gives government powers to keep the government information as secrets which any person can use to help enemy state. This act clashes with right to information act as right to information gives the citizen to demand for the information from the government offices but the OSA entitles the government to keep secrets. In a case, In June 2002, in a case famously known as iftihar gilani case, a journalist arrested for violating the OSA 1923. He was charged under the OSA, with a case under the Obscenity Act added to it. The first military report suggested that the information he was accused of holding was "secret" despite being publicly available. The second military intelligence report contradicted this, stating that there was no "official secret". Even after this, the government denied the opinion of the military and was on the verge of challenging it when the contradictions were exposed in the press. The military reported that, "the information contained in the document is easily available" and "the documents carries no security classified information and the information seems to have been gathered from open sources”. On January 13, 2003, the government withdrew its case against him to prevent having two of its ministries having to give contradictory opinions. And journalist was released the same month.
In Another case famously known as Santanu Saikia CBI case, A Delhi court in a 2009 judgement, involving the publication of excerpts of a cabinet note in the Financial Express ten years earlier by Santanu Saikia, greatly reduced the powers of the act by ruling publication of a document merely labelled ``secret`` shall not render the journalist liable under the law. Saikia was arrested in February, 2015 in another case that the police said involved the writing of stories and analyses from documents allegedly stolen from the government. He was released on bail in May after spending 80 days in jail.
There was another case involving the Reserve Bank of India. In case Reserve Bank of India vs. Jayantilal N. Mistry, “there was information demanded from the Reserve Bank of India which was denied under the section 8 of Right to information act and it was held, by the bench, Justice M.Y. Eqbal, expatiating on the nature of functions of the banking sector regulator said: “RBI is supposed to uphold public interest and not the interest of individual banks. RBI is clearly not in any fiduciary relationship with any bank. RBI has no legal duty to maximize the benefit of any public sector or private sector bank, and thus there is no relationship of ‘trust’ between them. RBI has a statutory duty to uphold the interest of the public at large, the depositors, the country’s economy and the banking sector. Thus, RBI ought to act with transparency and not hide information that might embarrass individual banks. It is duty bound to comply with the provisions of the RTI Act and disclose the information sought by the respondents herein.”
In the nutshell after the study of various topics in the subject matter and the articles related to the topic, it can be concluded that the right to information is a very essential right given to the citizens of mostly every country. In India it is given by the right to information act, 2005. This right to information act is a modified version of its preceding act of the similar nature which was freedom of information act. As every other right this right to information act is not absolute which means it is also given to the citizens with certain restrictions or we can say certain things are excluded from this right which are given in section 8 of right to information act. This right to information has developed with time and its base is strengthened up by some apex court rulings which direct certain government bodies to give the information demanded by the citizens.
