One of the first legislative actions of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in its second term has been to dilute and weaken the implementation of the Right to Information (RTI) Act of 2005.

On 22 July, the Lok Sabha passed the RTI Amendment Bill, 2019, which removes the statutory protection of tenure, salaries, allowances and conditions of service given to the central and state Information Commissioners, who are the final adjudicators of information requests. Instead, it says that their tenure and salaries shall be “as prescribed by the Central Government”. The changes undermine the autonomy of the commissioners tasked with implementing the law, and thus weakens one of India’s strongest open government and transparency laws.

This is not the Narendra Modi-led government’s first attempt to weaken the autonomy of the information commission officials. Even in its previous term, in July 2018, it had circulated a similar bill, but was forced to withdraw the proposal after public protests by citizen groups and activists. This year, on 19 July, it introduced the new amendment Bill in the Lok Sabha without having made the text available publicly and without any public consultation on the contents of the bill. Ignoring protests by MPs in the Lok Sabha and their requests to refer it to a parliamentary standing committee, the Bill will come up soon before the Rajya Sabha.

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The landmark RTI Act, 2005, allows any citizen to seek information from any government authority on payment of Rs 10. If this information is not provided, the person can appeal to the public information officers (PIOs) appointed in each department. If they are still denied the information, they also have the option of appealing to independent officials who function as Information Commissioners—at the central and state government levels—who then adjudicate the claims to ensure fair implementation of the transparency law.

The first appeals are usually not successful as they reach officials within the same departments that denied the information request in the first place. Instead, there is far greater chances of success at the stage of second appeal, which lies with the Information Commissioners.

Currently, section 13(1) and 13(2) of the RTI Act, 2005, fix the term of the office of the Chief Information Commissioner(CIC) and other information commissioners of the CIC at five years, with an age limit of 65 years. Section 13(5) allows their salaries and allowances to be at par with that of the Chief Election Commissioner and Election Commissioners, respectively, who are paid a salary equal to that of a judge of the Supreme Court, which is decided by the Parliament. Section 16(5) provides that the salaries and allowances, and other terms and conditions of service, of the State Chief Information Commissioners and State Information Commissioners shall be the same as that of the Election Commissioner and the Chief Secretary to the State Government.

A fixed tenure and high status is provided to Commissioners under the RTI Act, 2005, to allow them to carry out their functions with autonomy and impartiality. It is meant to empower them to direct even the highest offices to comply with the law when it comes to making relevant public information accessible to the citizen. This was also the recommendation of the parliamentary standing committee that had reviewed the original RTI law draft in 2004.