SC issues notice to Centre on Jairam Ramesh's PIL challenging RTI Act amendment

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 31

The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice to the Centre on senior Congress leader and former Union Minister Jairam Ramesh’s PIL challenging recent amendments to the RTI Act that left it to the government to fix the tenure and service conditions of Information Commissioners.

A Bench of Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice KM Joseph asked the Centre to respond in four weeks to the petition filed by Ramesh who alleged that the amendments hit at independence of the Central Information Commission (CIC) and State Information Commissions (SICs).

Ramesh has challenged the constitutional validity of the Right to Information (Amendment) Act-2019 which gives empowers the government to prescribe tenure, allowances and salary of Information Commissioners.

The RTI amendment Act, 2019 and the Right to Information (Term of Office, Salaries, Allowances and Other Terms and Conditions of Service) Rules, 2019 “collectively violate” the fundamental right to information of all citizens which is guaranteed under the Constitution.

The amendment “alters the erstwhile fixed tenure” of five years of central information commissioners (CICs) and state information commissioners (SICs), to a ”tenure to be prescribed by the central government”, he alleged.

“Section 2(c) of the amendment Act grants absolute power to the central government to prescribe the salaries, allowances, and terms and conditions of service of the central information commissioners that in the pre-amended Act was fixed to be on par with election commissioners under section 13(5) of the RTI Act,” the petition said.

The “unbridled and un-canalised” discretionary power vested in the Centre “jeopardizes the independence of information commissioners,” he said, adding it had no rational nexus with the object of the Act.

It said provision of the amendment Act “explicitly grants rule making power to the government over fixing the tenure, salaries and service conditions” of information commissioners.

“Even assuming the RTI amendment Act merely delegated rule making power to the central government without thwarting the independence of information commissioners, its accompanying RTI rules complete the destruction of the independence of information commissioners….,” it said.