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Wary PMO denies info on Bhopal gas tragedy-Nitin Sethi
-The Times of India

The PMO has denied information on the Bhopal gas tragedy, Dow Chemicals and the London Olympic Games sponsorship issue under the RTI Act on the strange ground that a "third party" whose interests are involved in the case has advised that revealing the documents would harm India's relations with a foreign country.

The third party also told the government that India had received the information "under confidence" from a foreign government and therefore should be denied to the applicant. The PMO has decided to go by the advice of the third party, whose name the government has not disclosed, and refused to share the documents with the public.

The petitioner, Hazra Bi, a victim of the 1984 tragedy, sought three sets of documents from the PMO. She asked for inspection of all files at the PMO on the issue of boycott of the London Olympic Games, of which Dow Chemicals is a sponsor. She asked for all files pertaining to Dow Chemical Company and its various subsidiaries and associated companies such as Union Carbide Corporation and UCIL. She also asked for all files pertaining to the Bhopal gas tragedy that PMO has maintained since 1984.

At first, the PMO failed to respond to the RTI query within the mandatory 30 days. When the petitioner went in appeal, she got her first reply. Then, the PMO claimed that the documents on the gas tragedy and the chemical multinational were too voluminous, too difficult to trace and would require "disproportionate use of PMO resources". It said the need for excessive government resources to dig out the documents permitted the PMO under RTI Act to deny sharing of information with the public.

But when Hazra Bi appealed against the PMO order, she got a letter saying that because the documents contained confidential information about a 'third party', the PMO would first seek permission from the third party, which it never named. The PMO then got back to the applicant and gave a fresh reason to deny a review of the documents. It noted that the 'third party' had demanded the information not be shared because it would hurt India's foreign relations and the documents had been received under confidence from another country.

Under RTI, any affected party is empowered to block disclosure if the government is going to reveal information which the particular entity had shared in confidence. The 'party', however, is not required to advise the government on the foreign policy implications of revealing information under the Act.

The RTI Act especially provides that if some specific information cannot be disclosed under specific provisions of the law, then the government agency can reveal the rest. But the government has not offered to sift the documents dating back from 1984 to the present.