NEW DELHI: After raising a red flag over proposed amendments to the RTI Act of 2005, chief information commissioner Shridhar Acharyulu has questioned the draft Personal Data Protection Bill 2018 prepared by Justice B N Srikrishna, referring to it as a tool that can give "more autocratic powers to the government of the day than the Maintenance of Internal Security Act , 1971 did during the Emergency days."

Calling the draft legislation an attempt to weaken people's right to information, the media as well as the freedom of speech, Acharyulu has opposed the proposed legislation on grounds that it seeks to undermine the existing RTI Act and to withhold information for frivolous reasons.

The draft legislation seeks to dilute Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act and says that information that 'relates to' personal data and which is 'likely to' to cause 'harm' to the person regarding whom information is sought can be enough ground to withhold information under RTI. Explaining the import of the proposed dilution, Acharyalu said, "Basically, this means that if someone asks under RTI whether a public servant is promoted despite disciplinary action, this could be considered information relating to 'personal' data and be denied."

Raising objections over the use of "vague terminology" in the draft legislation and calling it an effort at obfuscating, rather than bringing clarity to the process of seeking information, the central information commissioner has argued that the defence of 'privacy' should not be used to "shield crimes, wrongs or irregularities." Acharyalu also alleged there is a "serious internal conflict" between the existing RTI Act and the proposed PDPA bill.

He also said the report by the Justice Srikrishna-led committee "seriously interferes" with the freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1) and imposes "unreasonable restrictions on grounds of privacy." Acharyalu said, "The committee incharge of preparing the report on Personal Data Protection Authority Bill should have distinguished private data from private information in the context of RTI and the need for disclosure in public interest."

The Data Protection Bill, in toto, should not apply to public servants and to their data except for securing their 'sensitive personal data' like passwords, financial and health data among others. Other service related data of public servants cannot be considered private data."

