NEW DELHI: Facing criticism over its attempts to “dilute” the Right to Information Act, the government deferred introduction of the Right to Information (Amendment) Bill, 2018, on Thursday.

The amendment bill, which was listed as the first item on the Rajya Sabha ’s list of legislative business on Thursday, may now be taken up next week.

Junior parliamentary affairs minister Vijay Goel confirmed to TOI that the bill has been deferred and that a new date for discussion will be decided later.

The proposed amendments relate to changes to the salaries, allowances and terms of service of the chief information commissioner, information commissioners and state information commissioners and seek to do away with the parity given to information commissions with the EC in terms of salary, allowances and conditions of service. The amendment also proposes a change in the tenure of service from the current fixed five-year term to “terms as may be prescribed by the central government”.

The government had justified the move by saying the functions carried out by the EC and information commissions were completely different.

Attempts to introduce the amendment, however, were met with stiff resistance from political quarters as well as from RTI activists who termed the proposed amendments a bid to ‘dilute’ the legislation, lay siege on the autonomy of information commissions and lower the stature of information commissioners from their current equivalence to the election commissioner.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday tweeted against the proposed changes.

He said, “Every Indian has the right to know the truth. The BJP believes the truth must be hidden from the people.”

On Wednesday, a large numbers of RTI activists and family members of whistle blowers who were killed had gathered in Delhi to oppose the amendments.

