Uniform RTI Act mooted for South Asia region

Panaji, Oct 14: Media experts from South Asian countries today called for exploring the possibility of framing a uniform Right to Information Act for the entire region on the lines of the one in India.

They urged the respective countries to introduce similar legislation in view of the geopolitical and socio-economic similarities of the nations in the South Asian region to further promote grassroots democracy.

The experts also demanded that India should make suitable amendments to the RTI Act, there by making the administration more transparent. They discussed at length the merits and demerits of the Act vis-a-vis various media.

They were participating in an interactive session on the ''Right to Information: Are the Media playing their role?'' as part of the three-day South Asia Media Colloquium-2006 on the penultimate day today at the International Centre, Goa.

It was one of the six sessions under the theme ''Media and Development with a Human Face'' organised jointly by the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre of India (AMIC-India), Friedrich Ebert Stiftung-Germany and the ICG.

Chairing the session, former Press Institute of India (PII) chief Ajit Bhattacharjea urged the media to make the best use of the RTI Act which, he said, was only one of its kind in the world empowering the people at the grassroots level.

"The Centre," he said, "was contemplating to make more amendments including on the disclosure of file notings as part of refining the act further. But, he opined, the amendments should be pro-peode. It is linked to the livelihood and participation of people in grassroots democracy and has a vital role in changing the society. It is an instrument of change in governance,'' he said.

Aniruddha Behl, journalist and editor of ''www.cobrapost.com'' who while working with Tehelka.com had exposed underhand defence dealings, said his team was working on various stories such as comparison of the income tax declarations of members of Parliament with the actuals, and alleged tax evasion by 800 registered political parties in the country.

A story on certain NGOs funding insurgency outfits in the North-East India, foreign contributions received by certain organisations in the country, and suspected land dealings in Noida industrial estate were other aspects on which his team was working, he said.

D B Nihal Singha from Sri Lanka, Inam Ahmed from Bangladesh and several others from India maintained that no such act existed in south Asian countries and they must have such a legislation.

Amending the Indian Constitution to provide for a Right to Information like in the US, UK, Germany and other developed countries, repealing of the Official Secrets Act, 1923, and codification of the privileges of the members of Parliament and legislature, were other suggestions made in the interactive session.

The participants also pointed out instances of abuse of the RTI Act for settling scores by vested interests, particularly in educational instituitions where authorities tried to penalise the genuine information seekers by levying exorbitant fee on stationery.

Mr Vishnu Rajgadia, coordinating editor, ''Prabha Khabar'', Dhanbad and Deoghar, narrated his experiences and how the RTI Act was now being used to educate the masses in Jharkhand through various fora.

''The legislation has become a tremendous weapon for the common people and the media as well. I was used to be refused a single word earlier, but now I can have the complete file,'' he said amid applause.

He said, he had started RTI camps in Jharkhand against bribes and had appointed a special correspondent for reporting exclusively on the cases related to the Act braving criticism that the newspaper had turned into an NGO.

He had also trained about 100 students so far in use of the Act for the common man and started counselling the general public on the rightful use of the provision to redress their genuine grievances through residential welfare associations.

Nepal's Prateek Pradhan, editor, ''Kathmandu Post'', said the new government had recently set up a media and communications commission to help improve the functioning of the media of the Himalayan Kingdom.

UNI

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