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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Prez secy: Amend RTI to avoid 'embarrassment'

Prez secy: Amend RTI to avoid 'embarrassment'

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published Published on Oct 18, 2010   modified Modified on Oct 18, 2010

Unhappy with law ministry's disclosure of then chief election commissioner N Gopalaswami's "confidential" complaint against his colleague Navin Chawla, the President's secretary had asked the personnel department to frame procedural guidelines and make requisite changes in the law to avoid such "embarrassing" situations.

The department of personnel and training, after receiving a three-page communication from President's secretary Christy Fernandez in March, issued directions to all government departments to make public records of another department only after taking their consent. This was disclosed in an RTI reply. The controversy arose after Gopalaswami's complaint against then EC Navin Chawla, filed before the President, was denied by the President's secretariat in response to an application filed by activist S C Agrawal only to be disclosed by the law ministry in reply to another applicant.

Fernandez said in his letter that confidential papers were, at times, sent to different departments for examination although the authority may not be the original custodian of the document. "For any such authority to disclose confidential documents which are being denied by the original custodian can lead to a peculiar situation, putting the government in an embarrassing position as has been witnessed in the case," the letter provided to Agrawal in an RTI reply said.

"Since DoPT is the nodal ministry dealing with the RTI Act, you are requested to issue suitable procedural guidelines in this regard and, if necessary, make requisite amendments in the Act so that such instances are not repeated in future," he said.

Fernandez said media reports tried to project that the President's secretariat had "unnecessarily withheld" information which was given by another ministry and alleged that "one department of the government is not aware of what the other department is doing". He said the letter was addressed to the President who forwarded it to the PMO which, in turn, sent it to law ministry for examination. "The first custodian of this information is the President's secretariat... therefore, disclosure of information by another department would be violative of section 6(3) of the Act," the letter said.


The Times of India, 18 October, 2010, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Prez-secy-Amend-RTI-to-avoid-embarrassment/articleshow/6766182.cms


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