Amendment to the RTI

[Press release dated 24 July 2019]

On 24 July 2019, seven former information commissioners of the Central Information Commission addressed a press conference in Delhi and unanimously condemned the move of the National Democratic Alliance government to amend the Right to Information (RTI) Act through the RTI (Amendment) Bill 2019. Wajahat Habibullah, Deepak Sandhu (both former chief information commissioners [CIC]), Shailesh Gandhi, Sridhar Acharyulu, M M Ansari, Yashovardhan Azad and Annapurna Dixit (former information commissioners) termed the amendment as a direct attack on the autonomy of information commissions and peoples’ fundamental right to know, and urged the government to withdraw the regressive amendments. The RTI (Amendment) Bill 2019 was passed by the Lok Sabha on 22 July 2019 and the Rajya Sabha on 25 July.