The opposition against government's proposed amendments to the Right to information act has gathered steam with the National Advisory Council joining the fray of those opposed to these changes.

The NAC working group on transparency, accountability and governance has rejected the proposal terming the proposed limitation of the application to one subject and 250 words  ‘ultra vires' (beyond government interference) as per the Act and has called for dropping it from the draft of amendments.

The group, under the chairpersonship of Aruna Roy organised a consultation on the proposed amendments and deliberated on a number of issues including autonomy and efficient functioning of information commissions, fees for providing information, appeal procedures, and imposition of penalties on malafide denial of information by PIOs.

The group unanimously passed a resolution opposing the amendments. “All amendments to RTI rules must be based on extensive public consultations. Where public objections or suggestions are ignored, reasons must be made public, in accordance with letter and spirit of Section 4(1)(d) of the RTI Act,” said the resolution.

Some of the points raised by the group are as follows

1. Information Commissions should have complete freedom to select its staff and allocate work and responsibility

2. Limitations of one subject and 250 words is ultra vires to the Act and must be dropped

3. Subjective and unreasonable fees such as salary of staff, hiring equipment cost will not be charged for information and samples requested.

4. All formats should be indicative and not mandatory. No appeal shall be rejected solely on the basis of not being in the indicative format.

5. Lack of self-attestation and verification of attached documents, or missing documents shall not be grounds for rejection of appeal. Applicant shall be given opportunity to complete documentation and/or come attest documentation in case of dispute

6. Withdrawal of appeals should not be allowed; neither should applications abate on death of applicant

7. Order of Commission should be announced in open court

NAC’s resolution opposing the proposed amendments came after the government started the notifying the RTI rules. As per the new rules, each RTI application can have questions related to only one subject matter and the word limit is 250 words. This is excluding the address of the central public information officer and the address of the applicant.

Further, the applicant will be required to pay the actual amount spent by public authority on hiring a machine or any other equipment, if any, to supply information.