The Congress, credited with enacting the Act, is scripting its undoing in the State, they say

The Congress government in Madhya Pradesh, which rode to power after a long wait on several scams unravelled during the former BJP regime through the Right to Information Act (RTI), 2005, is planning to raise the fee to file queries by 10 times.

An informed source within the State Information Commission told The Hindu that a proposal, prepared by the General Administration Department (GAD), plans to jack up the fee for the first appeal from ₹50 to ₹500 and the second appeal from ₹100 to ₹1,000, making it the most expensive to ferret out information from a public authority to check corruption and ensure transparency using the Act.

An official attached with GAD Minister Govind Singh said the proposal hadn’t yet reached him, while the department had already received suggestions from the Commission on it, indicating officials had bypassed the long-held convention of securing the Minister’s approval at both the incipient and the final stages of a proposal. Mr. Singh refused to comment.

“The proposal was prepared by the State government. In any case, it’s their discretion to decide the fee,” said Chief Information Commissioner A.K. Shukla. The source there said it had suggested the government bring down the proposed raise to ₹50 instead, and leave untouched the price to procure photocopies of documents at ₹2, which the government had proposed to raise too.

Dharnendra Kumar Jain, Deputy Secretary, GAD, refusing to divulge details including the rationale behind the proposal, said: “The proposal is under consideration and its contents will be made public only after it’s finalised. We’ve not yet decided on the extent of the fee raise.”

The raise to ₹100 had been proposed despite the Supreme Court in 2018 capping the fee per application at ₹50 and per photocopy at ₹5, an order applicable to all government authorities. The Act, not prescribing the fee, leaves it to the governments to make rules for it.

“The Congress government at the Centre is credited with enacting the Act, and its government in Madhya Pradesh is now scripting its undoing,” said Ajay Dubey, Bhopal-based RTI activist and Board Member, Transparency International India.

In its manifesto ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the Congress had promised voters it would review the Act to omit provisions that may have diluted it and add provisions to strengthen it.

Stating that the Act’s implementation was shoddy already and in a shambles, Mr. Dubey said Madhya Pradesh was the only State where the Chief Minister’s and the Chief Secretary’s offices didn’t have a public information officer. Moreover, it has exempted the Lokayukta police from it and the Commission’s website hadn’t been functioning for months, denying applicants information on appeal status.

“With the change of guard at the Centre, even Prime Minister Narendra Modi didn’t tinker with the fee and the Act’s execution,” he said. “The Congress took documents procured through Act from us to have an edge during the election. Now, it is directly attacking the common man.” Scams in the Vyapam, the State Public Service Commission, online recruitment, mining and political recommendations in police had been uncovered using the Act.

Nikhil Dey of the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information said the proposal must be fought on all fronts. “It’s unprecedented. Even ₹10 for an application is merely symbolic as it’s the government’s duty to give information under the Act.”

In any case, the government must provide information on its own under the Act, said Abhay Jain, a lawyer in Shivpuri district, who files 20-25 queries a month. “The proposal is an attack on the right of people to know what the government is up to.”

Several States and the Centre charge no fee to file appeals, said Rolly Shivhare, an activist in Bhopal. “The poor file queries in small villages to secure their rights. Instead of reducing the fee, the government plans to increase it, which is abominable and an attempt to snatch their basic rights.”

A senior official at the Commission said if the motive was revenue generation, the government must focus on recovering outstanding fine running into lakhs from officials violating the Act first. “The BJP government in Haryana recovers fine imposed on officials directly from their salaries. But here, we’re planning to discourage people from using the Act. Already, there have been thousands of pending cases since 2015,” he said.