Kerala Government wants to restrict journalists from using right to information

Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Government has suggested to the Central government to restrict journalists from using the right to information frequently.

The Parliamentary Committee on Subordinate Legislation had sought suggestions from State governments on amending the Right to Information Act “to remedy difficulties caused by fake and irrelevant RTI applications”.

In its response, the government suggested that professional media persons (Press, TV etc) might be kept out of the purview of eligible applicants or might be charged more for information given as such information are likely to be used for their publicity and profit.

“Number of questions that can be asked in a single RTI application may be limited to certain number. Measures may be initiated to reveal all relevant information about an organisation through its Web page its. Voluntary disclosure of such information about organisations will definitely help common citizen and also help in limiting number of RTI questions.”

It observed that some Government employees were also using RTI application for getting information within an organisation. Such practices caused wastage of time and efforts. “A Government employee before filing RTI application to know his service particulars (Promotions/ seniority etc.) may first use service channel.”

The General Administration Department said in its note that increased work load and time limit for giving replies to RTI applications consumed a lot of time and energy of the department. As priority is given to RTI applications, other works suffered. Often information sought by applicants is not handy and hence old records and files had to be verified before giving satisfactory reply.

“Some people like media persons and public interest litigation groups are in the habit of making a number of questions through RTI Act for publishing the information through their printed or electronic media. In a democracy, media has a vital role to pay, but that does not mean that by spending a fee of Rs. 10, they can ask any number of questions and use such answers as news.

“If we want to improve the Right to information Act, some reasonable check and measures should be included in the Act through amendments.”

The Department overreached to suggest such amendments when the query from the committee was about irrelevant and applications and ways to remedy the problem. (It is another question how an application could be considered as fake or irrelevant without subjective judgment of the information officers.)

It may be recalled that apart from issuing notification to prevent assess to details of vigilance enquiries against present and past ministers, legislators and all India service officers, the government has also sought to deny access to information on Mullaperiyar issue through an illegal order, misinterpreting the Act. The State Information Commission has been sitting on petitions over this and earlier requests for information. A few of the appeals are more than three years old. The Chief Information Commissioner Siby Mathews maintains that he was not aware of the issue.

It is also notable that Vigilance Department had denied information just a day before the Cabinet made amends to its move to stonewall information on vigilance enquiries against ministers, and that the information sought was mainly statistics. The following were the questions asked by Raju Vazhakala which reveals the problem faced by Oommen Chandy government when read with its refusal to give the answers.

“How many (vigilance) cases were registered against the ministers of Oommen Chandy government? How many cases were disposed of? Please provide the number of cases registered against each minister?  As of February 27, 2016, how many cases were pending decisions?

“How many cases were registered against IPS and IAS officers between April 1, 2011 and February 27, 2016? How many of them were disposed of? How many were pending? Please provide names and current designation of IAS and IPS officers against who cases were registered?”

Tailpiece:
 Is there a chance that the government will answer them before the Assembly elections?!