While Manmohan Singh will be remembered for many things, his lasting legacy as Prime Minister of India will be the implementation of the Right to Information (RTI) Act. He passed away as the RTI Act entered its 20th year of implementation, a weapon in the hands of the common man that no politician could wield in public, even if they chose to flout it.
The RTI Bill was introduced in Parliament in December 2004, and was passed by the Lok Sabha on May 11, 2005 and the Rajya Sabha the following day. During the debate on the legislation, Singh told the Lok Sabha: “The passage of this Bill will usher in a new era in our governance, an era of performance and efficiency, an era that will ensure the benefits of growth for all sections of our people, an era that eradicates the scourge of corruption, the common man’s interest in all processes of governance.” An era of bringing to the center, an era that will truly fulfill the hopes of the founders of our republic.”
The law was actually first introduced by Singh’s predecessor Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government in 2002 as the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act. However, the Vajpayee government did not make rules for this, and hence the Act was never implemented.
When Singh was sworn in in 2004, he first considered making rules for a single FOI Act. However, later a bill was drafted to enact the RTI Act, which finally came into effect on October 12, 2005.
When it enacted the RTI Act, India became one of the few countries with such a law. In Sweden, such a law was implemented for the first time in 1766, America brought it in 1966, and Britain, like India, made such a law in 2005. Since then, many countries have followed suit, with nearly 120 now boasting similar laws.
Soon after the RTI Act came into force, complaints started pouring in from government offices about being flooded with applications. Although Singh never criticized the law, he said in October 2011 at the Sixth Annual Conference of the Central Information Commission (CIC): “A public body is inundated with requests for information that have no impact on public interest. It’s something you don’t like. Therefore, we must pool all our wisdom, our knowledge and experience to come to a conclusion on how to deal with the vexing demand for information, while at the same time, hindering the flow of information to those whose demand truly serves the public interest. .”
The following year, at the annual CIC conference, he expressed concern about “the frivolous and despicable use of the Act to demand information, the disclosure of which would serve no public purpose”. “Information sometimes covering a long period of time or a large number of cases is universally sought with the aim of finding objectionable inconsistencies or errors. Such inquiries serve little productive social purpose and are a drain on the public body’s resources, which could be better spent on valuable man-hours.”
In 2010, during Singh’s second term as Prime Minister, his government exempted the CBI from the purview of RTI.
However, overall, the UPA government continued to take pride in the law, with leaders from Sonia Gandhi to Rahul Gandhi citing it. Singh also remained confident in his power, despite several alleged corruption scandals exposed using the Act during his second term.
By introducing RTI, the Congress fulfilled its promise in its 2004 election manifesto. When the UPA was formed, its National Common Minimum Program also spoke of the RTI Act.
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