Right To Information During The Corona Virus Lock Down

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The unbearable but necessary nation wide lockdown to control the spread of the Coronavirus pandemic has thrown the life out of gear for almost every individual of every walk of life. When the virus began to spread in the country, the Government was confronted with the choice of either to save the lives or livelihoods of individuals and it choose the former one, thereby leaving the poor and migrant families to run from pillar to post in search of food, shelter and other basic necessities for their survival. The Government through its financial packages is trying to mitigate the sufferings of this poor people, but still the misery unfortunately continues.

The effect of coronavirus on the legal system is such that it has made all the laws and rules and the even the most cherished fundamental rights look like mere paper hopes at the hands of Government, which took away almost every power from the individuals. The lockdown has seen increase in domestic violence against women, failure of parties to fulfill the promises made under contracts and many more, but this article deals with the effects of lockdown on Right to Information legislation.

As is popularly known, the Right to Information Act was enacted in the year 2005 by the Indian Parliament, in order to make the information regarding all the activities of the Government public for promoting transparency and accountability in the system. The legislation through the help of judiciary played a pivotal role in dissemination of every public information right from the office of post man to the office of prime minister of India.

The individual who aimed to seek information, used to make a physical application to the Public Information officer (PIO) by paying the prescribed fee and get the requisite information and if dissatisfied with the information provided by the PIO, he should follow appeal procedure as provided under the RTI Act.

Given the density of nation like India where in spite of strict vigil, there will be some sort of the discrepancy left in the administration and in order to remedy that discrepancy only RTI acts as an effective tool, but due to the unprecedented nation wide lockdown, the restriction on movement of the individuals has been imposed, depriving the information seeker to get required information under the RTI Act by approaching the office of the Public Information officer.

Under these circumstances, the question that arises is whether there is any procedure in this digitalized era to seek information in an online method? The answer is ‘NO’, despite the fact that there is a clear mandate under Section – 6(1) of the RTI Act itself which stipulates that, “A person, who desires to obtain any information under this Act, shall make a request in writing or through electronic means in English or Hindi or in the official language of the area in which the application is being made, accompanying such fee as may be prescribed…”. The use of the words ‘through electronic means’ itself connotes that the information seeker should be provided with the means and ways like Online Portals by every department of the Central and State Government through which he can seek information by resorting to electronic means. But the fallacy is except the Central Government and two or three State Governments, no other State Governments have an Online portal through which an individual can seek information under the RTI Act and even in Central Government portal, there are a lot of technical glitches.

To remedy this malady, several Public Interest Litigations (PIL) were filed in the Supreme court and various High courts, seeking to direct the Government to come with an online portal for receiving applications under the RTI Act, but sometimes courts were disinclined to interfere and sometimes States were lackadaisical to make the changes, thereby leaving the seeking of information in a virtual form a far dream.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court in a recent PIL filed by a social organisation, ‘Pravasi Legal Cell’, directed the States to file a counter-affidavit in regard with the prayer made by the petitioners seeking to start the system of Online portals for seeking information so that Non Resident Indians (NRI) can avail the benefits of this legislation.

It would be apt to mention that under the RTI Act any information which relates to ‘life and liberty’ of the individual has to be provided within forty-eight hours of seeking such information and the intent of the legislature to provide for seeking information through ‘electronic means’ also was probably to meet this kind of unexpected exigencies, but due to the lackadaisical attitude of the Governments, Right to Information became a dead-letter in this corona lockdown time, which is very unfortunate for the citizenry because Justice Mathew’s golden words in State of Uttar Pradesh v. Raj Narain, (1975) 4 SCC 428, which sowed the seeds for Right to Information regime in our country observed that, “In a government of responsibility like ours, where all the agents of the public must be responsible for their conduct, there can be few secrets. The people of this country have a right to know every public act, everything that is done in a public way, their public functionaries. They are entitled to know the particulars of every transaction in its bearing. The right to know, which is derived from the concept of freedom of speech, though not absolute, is a factor which should make one varies, when secrecy is repercussion on public security. To cover with veil of secrecy the common routine business is not in the interest of the public”.

And even in this lockdown time, the citizenry has every right to know every act of the government which is concerned with their life and liberty, hence the viable solution to the problem would be after the lockdown is over, the Government should initiate steps for launching an online portal for receiving applications under the RTI Act and for the time being it can provide an email address of every department in the government, where an applicant can seek information.

Baglekar Akash Kumar.

(4^th year, L.L.B (5 YDC), University College of Law, Osmania University, Hyderabad)

Email : akashbaglekar@gmail.com