NEW DELHI: People cannot have the absolute right to blow a whistle if they see wrong-doing, says a cabinet note on the amendments to the Whistleblowers’ Protection Act . The note, accessed under RTI, states that the present law gives an “absolute right to whistleblower to make a complaint’’ and recommends restrictions like exemptions from disclosure under the RTI Act.

The Act is currently under consideration of the Rajya Sabha and was listed for passing on Tuesday. Activists have raised concerns that the bill once passed may not leave anything to complain about. Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative’s (CHRI) Venkatesh Nayak, who filed the RTI on the proposed legislation, said the restrictions were absurd making it impossible for scams like Vyapam, CWG or even Adarsh to be exposed.

The proposed legislation allows disclosure of offences of corruption recognised under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1989, or attempts to commit such offences, willful misuse of power or discretion to cause demonstrable loss to the Government or demonstrable wrongful gain to the public servant or a third party and commission or attempt to commit any offence recognised under any law for the time being in force.

However, this is restricted by safeguards against the disclosure of information that would prejudicially affect the sovereignty, integrity, defence, security, strategic, economic and scientific interests of the country besides its foreign relations. If the complaint relates to commercial confidence, trade secrets, intellectual property rights or is available to a person in his fiduciary relationship (lawyer-client, doctor-patient etc) or relates to the privacy of an individual then the whistleblower must prove that the information was obtained under the RTI Act if the competent authority is to inquire into it

According to Nayak this means that the whistleblower will not be able to complain against defence procurements, or wrongdoing in stock exchanges or failures of intelligence agencies or military strategy. This will also exclude complaints related to the commercial confidence, trade secrets or intellectual property of a private company which means that no officer, private person or NGO will be allowed to blow the whistle about environmental pollution or degradation of the ecology caused by that company's actions, often occurring in collusion with other public servants, Nayak said.

The whistleblower will also be prohibited from making a complaint related to the personal information about a public servant. It means that he cannot make a complaint of bribery against a minister unless he has obtained the supporting records under the RTI Act.

