Every year, teachers in the National Law Universities (NLUs) would teach their students two landmark judgements in Indian Constitutional Law:
Bennett Coleman v UoI where the court held:
"The freedom of speech includes within its compass the right of all citizens to read and be informed."
State of UP v. Raj Narain [The case is a prelude to the Emergency and is also taught, I believe, as a part of the course on Law of Evidence], where the court held:
"In a government of responsibility like ours, where all the agents of the public must be responsible for their conduct, there can but few secrets. The people of this country have a right to know every public act, everything, that is done in a public way, by their public functionaries. They are entitled to know the particulars of every public transaction in all its bearing. The right to know, which is derived from the concept of freedom of speech, though not absolute, is a factor which should make one wary, when secrecy is claimed for transactions which can, at any rate, have no repercussion on public security. To cover with veil secrecy the common routine business, is not in the interest of the public. Such secrecy can seldom be legitimately desired. It is generally desired for the purpose of parties and politics or personal self-interest or bureaucratic routine. The responsibility of officials to explain and to justify their acts is the chief safeguard against oppression and corruption."
Such being the importance of the right of citizens to know, it would do well to look into how the NLUs have respected this right. But first, something about the Right to Information Act, 2005 ("RTI Act" or "Act").
The RTI Act received presidential assent on 15 June 2005. S. 1(3) of the Act provides that certain provisions of the Act would come into force at once and other provisions would become effective on the 120th day of the enactment. S 2(h) defines public authorities to include any authority or body or institution of self-Government established or constituted by any law of Parliament or by any law of a State Legislature. Surely, all the NLUs have been established through state enactments and hence are within the purview of "Public Authority".
Section 4 of the Act provides: [pardon the lengthy quote]
"4. (1) Every public authority shall— a) maintain all its records duly catalogued and indexed in a manner and the form which facilitates the right to information under this Act and ensure that all records that are appropriate to be computerised are, within a reasonable time and subject to availability of resources, computerised and connected through a network all over the country on different systems so that access to such records is facilitated;
b) publish within one hundred and twenty days from the enactment of this Act,— (i) the particulars of its organisation, functions and duties; (ii) the powers and duties of its officers and employees; (iii) the procedure followed in the decision making process, including channels of supervision and accountability; (iv) the norms set by it for the discharge of its functions; (v) the rules, regulations, instructions, manuals and records, held by it or under its control or used by its employees for discharging its functions; (vi) a statement of the categories of documents that are held by it or under its control; (vii) the particulars of any arrangement that exists for consultation with, or representation by, the members of the public in relation to the formulation of its policy or implementation thereof; (viii) a statement of the boards, councils, committees and other bodies consisting of two or more persons constituted as its part or for the purpose of its advice, and as to whether meetings of those boards, councils, committees and other bodies are open to the public, or the minutes of such meetings are accessible for public; (ix) a directory of its officers and employees; (x) the monthly remuneration received by each of its officers and employees, including the system of compensation as provided in its regulations; (xi) the budget allocated to each of its agency, indicating the particulars of all plans, proposed expenditures and reports on disbursements made; (xii) the manner of execution of subsidy programmes, including the amounts allocated and the details of beneficiaries of such programmes; (xiii) particulars of recipients of concessions, permits or authorisations granted by it; (xiv) details in respect of the information, available to or held by it, reduced in an electronic form; (xv) the particulars of facilities available to citizens for obtaining information, including the working hours of a library or reading room, if maintained for public use; (xvi) the names, designations and other particulars of the Public Information Officers; (xvii) such other information as may be prescribed; and thereafter update these publications every year; c) publish all relevant facts while formulating important policies or announcing the decisions which affect public; d) provide reasons for its administrative or quasi-judicial decisions to affected persons.
(2) It shall be a constant endeavour of every public authority to take steps in accordance with the requirements of clause (b) of sub-section (1) to provide as much information suo motu to the public at regular intervals through various means of communications, including internet, so that the public have minimum resort to the use of this Act to obtain information.
(3) For the purposes of sub-section (1), every information shall be disseminated widely and in such form and manner which is easily accessible to the public.
(4) All materials shall be disseminated taking into consideration the cost effectiveness, local language and the most effective method of communication in that local area and the information should be easily accessible, to the extent possible in electronic format with the Central Public Information Officer or State Public Information Officer, as the case may be, available free or at such cost of the medium or the print cost price as may be prescribed.
Explanation.—For the purposes of sub-sections (3) and (4), "disseminated" means making known or communicated the information to the public through notice boards, newspapers, public announcements, media broadcasts, the internet or any other means, including inspection of offices of any public authority."
[Emphasis not in the original]
In February 2008, an Office Memorandum was circulated by the Department of Personnel and Training. The Memorandum contained the guidelines for the officers designated as the Central Public Information Officers (Central PIO). These were to apply mutatis mutandis for State Public Information Officers. [The binding force of these guidelines may be disputed. In any case, these act as a model that the PIOs are supposed to emulate.] The Memorandum states:
Bennett Coleman v UoI where the court held:
"The freedom of speech includes within its compass the right of all citizens to read and be informed."
State of UP v. Raj Narain [The case is a prelude to the Emergency and is also taught, I believe, as a part of the course on Law of Evidence], where the court held:
"In a government of responsibility like ours, where all the agents of the public must be responsible for their conduct, there can but few secrets. The people of this country have a right to know every public act, everything, that is done in a public way, by their public functionaries. They are entitled to know the particulars of every public transaction in all its bearing. The right to know, which is derived from the concept of freedom of speech, though not absolute, is a factor which should make one wary, when secrecy is claimed for transactions which can, at any rate, have no repercussion on public security. To cover with veil secrecy the common routine business, is not in the interest of the public. Such secrecy can seldom be legitimately desired. It is generally desired for the purpose of parties and politics or personal self-interest or bureaucratic routine. The responsibility of officials to explain and to justify their acts is the chief safeguard against oppression and corruption."
Such being the importance of the right of citizens to know, it would do well to look into how the NLUs have respected this right. But first, something about the Right to Information Act, 2005 ("RTI Act" or "Act").
The RTI Act received presidential assent on 15 June 2005. S. 1(3) of the Act provides that certain provisions of the Act would come into force at once and other provisions would become effective on the 120th day of the enactment. S 2(h) defines public authorities to include any authority or body or institution of self-Government established or constituted by any law of Parliament or by any law of a State Legislature. Surely, all the NLUs have been established through state enactments and hence are within the purview of "Public Authority".
Section 4 of the Act provides: [pardon the lengthy quote]
"4. (1) Every public authority shall— a) maintain all its records duly catalogued and indexed in a manner and the form which facilitates the right to information under this Act and ensure that all records that are appropriate to be computerised are, within a reasonable time and subject to availability of resources, computerised and connected through a network all over the country on different systems so that access to such records is facilitated;
b) publish within one hundred and twenty days from the enactment of this Act,— (i) the particulars of its organisation, functions and duties; (ii) the powers and duties of its officers and employees; (iii) the procedure followed in the decision making process, including channels of supervision and accountability; (iv) the norms set by it for the discharge of its functions; (v) the rules, regulations, instructions, manuals and records, held by it or under its control or used by its employees for discharging its functions; (vi) a statement of the categories of documents that are held by it or under its control; (vii) the particulars of any arrangement that exists for consultation with, or representation by, the members of the public in relation to the formulation of its policy or implementation thereof; (viii) a statement of the boards, councils, committees and other bodies consisting of two or more persons constituted as its part or for the purpose of its advice, and as to whether meetings of those boards, councils, committees and other bodies are open to the public, or the minutes of such meetings are accessible for public; (ix) a directory of its officers and employees; (x) the monthly remuneration received by each of its officers and employees, including the system of compensation as provided in its regulations; (xi) the budget allocated to each of its agency, indicating the particulars of all plans, proposed expenditures and reports on disbursements made; (xii) the manner of execution of subsidy programmes, including the amounts allocated and the details of beneficiaries of such programmes; (xiii) particulars of recipients of concessions, permits or authorisations granted by it; (xiv) details in respect of the information, available to or held by it, reduced in an electronic form; (xv) the particulars of facilities available to citizens for obtaining information, including the working hours of a library or reading room, if maintained for public use; (xvi) the names, designations and other particulars of the Public Information Officers; (xvii) such other information as may be prescribed; and thereafter update these publications every year; c) publish all relevant facts while formulating important policies or announcing the decisions which affect public; d) provide reasons for its administrative or quasi-judicial decisions to affected persons.
(2) It shall be a constant endeavour of every public authority to take steps in accordance with the requirements of clause (b) of sub-section (1) to provide as much information suo motu to the public at regular intervals through various means of communications, including internet, so that the public have minimum resort to the use of this Act to obtain information.
(3) For the purposes of sub-section (1), every information shall be disseminated widely and in such form and manner which is easily accessible to the public.
(4) All materials shall be disseminated taking into consideration the cost effectiveness, local language and the most effective method of communication in that local area and the information should be easily accessible, to the extent possible in electronic format with the Central Public Information Officer or State Public Information Officer, as the case may be, available free or at such cost of the medium or the print cost price as may be prescribed.
Explanation.—For the purposes of sub-sections (3) and (4), "disseminated" means making known or communicated the information to the public through notice boards, newspapers, public announcements, media broadcasts, the internet or any other means, including inspection of offices of any public authority."
[Emphasis not in the original]
In February 2008, an Office Memorandum was circulated by the Department of Personnel and Training. The Memorandum contained the guidelines for the officers designated as the Central Public Information Officers (Central PIO). These were to apply mutatis mutandis for State Public Information Officers. [The binding force of these guidelines may be disputed. In any case, these act as a model that the PIOs are supposed to emulate.] The Memorandum states:
"The Act makes it obligatory for every public authority to make suo-motu disclosure in respect of the particulars of its organization, functions, duties and other matters, asprovided in section 4 of the Act. The information so published, according to sub-section (4)of section 4, should be easily accessible with the CPIO in electronic format. The CPIO should, therefore, make concerned efforts to ensure that the requirements of the Section 4 are met and maximum information in respect of the public authority is made available on the internet."
[Emphasis not in the original]
Government Public Sector Undertakings like NTPC, ONGC, BHEL etc have dedicated pages for providing information as mandated by the Act. Even the web pages of various ministries contain such dedicated pages.
The above introductory was simply to place the issue of RTI in the context. The purpose of this post is to see to what level the NLUs have complied with one of the fundamental tasks of the public authorities under the RTI Act: publish information provided under S 4 in their websites.
Certain disclaimers:
(a) Two browsers, Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer, were used
(b) An Advanced Search was also made with the search string "Right to Information" to double check if the website of the NLU complied with the RTI Act.
(c) Thirteen NLUs have been considered : NLSIU Bangalore, NALSAR Hyderabad, NUJS Kolkata, NUALS Kochi, GNLU Gandhinagar, NLU Jodhpur, NLUO Cuttack, RGNUL Patiala, RMLNLU Lucknow, NLU Delhi, CNLU Patna, NLIU Bhopal and HNLU Raipur.
d) Whether the NLUs were in substantial compliance of all the provisions of the Act is not discussed here. All that has been done is to see if the NLUs have at least procedurally complied with the RTI Act by publishing some information in their websites. The adequacy of the information published is outside the scope of this post.
e) The date and time when each website was last visited is mentioned at the end of the post.
Compliance by the NLUs:
Each institution's website has been perused. Following are the results of such perusal:
NLUs in Compliance:
NALSAR Hyderabad, NLSIU Bangalore, GNLU Gandhinagar, RMLNLU [the wesbite contains merely the contact details of the PIO and the Appellate Authority] and NLU Delhi have separate pages for Right to Information Act.
NLUs not in Compliance:
NLIU Bhopal and CNLU Patna have links titled "Right to Information" or "RTI" but the links don't work. Rest of the NLUs are not in compliance with the Act. The NLUs not in compliance are:
List of NLUs websites/ their RTI pages:
1. NLSIU Bangalore: http://www.nls.ac.in/NLSRTI.pdf, last visited at 0754 hrs on 09.07.2010
2. NUALS Kochi: www,nuals.ac.in, last visited at 0757 hrs on 09.07.2010
3. NUJS Kolkata: http://www.nujs.edu, last visited at 0756 hrs on 09.07.2010.
4. GNLU Gandhinagar: http://www.gnlu.ac.in/Files/information.pdf, last visited at 0759 hrs on 09.07.2010
5. NLU Jodhpur: www.nlujodhpur.ac.in, last visited at 0801 hrs on 09.07.2010
6. NLUO Cuttack: www.nluo.ac.in, last visited at 0803 hrs on 09.07.2010
7. RGNUL Patiala: www.rgnulpatiala.org, last visited at 0803 hrs on 09.07.2010
8. RMLNLU Lucknow: http://www.rmlnlu.ac.in/notices/rti_pio.pdf, last visited at 0805 hrs on 09.07.2010 [the wesbite contains merely the contact details of the PIO and the Appellate Authority]
9. HNLU Raipur: www.hnlu.ac.in, last visited at 0810 hrs on 09.07.2010
10. NLIU Bhopal: www.nliu.com last visited at 0811 hrs on 09.07.2010 [link titled "RTI" doesn't work]
11. CNLU Patna: http://www.cnlu.ac.in/rti.php last visited at 0812 hrs on 09.07.2010 [link doesn't work]
12. NALSAR Hyderabad: http://nalsar.ac.in/right_information.html, last visited at 0823 hrs on 09.07.2010
13. NLU Delhi: http://nludelhi.ac.in/RTIAct.htm, last visited at 0823 hrs on 09.07.2010.
[Emphasis not in the original]
Government Public Sector Undertakings like NTPC, ONGC, BHEL etc have dedicated pages for providing information as mandated by the Act. Even the web pages of various ministries contain such dedicated pages.
The above introductory was simply to place the issue of RTI in the context. The purpose of this post is to see to what level the NLUs have complied with one of the fundamental tasks of the public authorities under the RTI Act: publish information provided under S 4 in their websites.
Certain disclaimers:
(a) Two browsers, Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer, were used
(b) An Advanced Search was also made with the search string "Right to Information" to double check if the website of the NLU complied with the RTI Act.
(c) Thirteen NLUs have been considered : NLSIU Bangalore, NALSAR Hyderabad, NUJS Kolkata, NUALS Kochi, GNLU Gandhinagar, NLU Jodhpur, NLUO Cuttack, RGNUL Patiala, RMLNLU Lucknow, NLU Delhi, CNLU Patna, NLIU Bhopal and HNLU Raipur.
d) Whether the NLUs were in substantial compliance of all the provisions of the Act is not discussed here. All that has been done is to see if the NLUs have at least procedurally complied with the RTI Act by publishing some information in their websites. The adequacy of the information published is outside the scope of this post.
e) The date and time when each website was last visited is mentioned at the end of the post.
Compliance by the NLUs:
Each institution's website has been perused. Following are the results of such perusal:
NLUs in Compliance:
NALSAR Hyderabad, NLSIU Bangalore, GNLU Gandhinagar, RMLNLU [the wesbite contains merely the contact details of the PIO and the Appellate Authority] and NLU Delhi have separate pages for Right to Information Act.
NLUs not in Compliance:
NLIU Bhopal and CNLU Patna have links titled "Right to Information" or "RTI" but the links don't work. Rest of the NLUs are not in compliance with the Act. The NLUs not in compliance are:
- NUJS Kolkata
- NUALS Kochi
- NLU Jodhpur
- NLUO Cuttack
- RGNUL Patiala
- HNLU Raipur
- NLIU Bhopal [RTI link doesn't work]
- CNLU Patna [RTI link doesn't work]
List of NLUs websites/ their RTI pages:
1. NLSIU Bangalore: http://www.nls.ac.in/NLSRTI.pdf, last visited at 0754 hrs on 09.07.2010
2. NUALS Kochi: www,nuals.ac.in, last visited at 0757 hrs on 09.07.2010
3. NUJS Kolkata: http://www.nujs.edu, last visited at 0756 hrs on 09.07.2010.
4. GNLU Gandhinagar: http://www.gnlu.ac.in/Files/information.pdf, last visited at 0759 hrs on 09.07.2010
5. NLU Jodhpur: www.nlujodhpur.ac.in, last visited at 0801 hrs on 09.07.2010
6. NLUO Cuttack: www.nluo.ac.in, last visited at 0803 hrs on 09.07.2010
7. RGNUL Patiala: www.rgnulpatiala.org, last visited at 0803 hrs on 09.07.2010
8. RMLNLU Lucknow: http://www.rmlnlu.ac.in/notices/rti_pio.pdf, last visited at 0805 hrs on 09.07.2010 [the wesbite contains merely the contact details of the PIO and the Appellate Authority]
9. HNLU Raipur: www.hnlu.ac.in, last visited at 0810 hrs on 09.07.2010
10. NLIU Bhopal: www.nliu.com last visited at 0811 hrs on 09.07.2010 [link titled "RTI" doesn't work]
11. CNLU Patna: http://www.cnlu.ac.in/rti.php last visited at 0812 hrs on 09.07.2010 [link doesn't work]
12. NALSAR Hyderabad: http://nalsar.ac.in/right_information.html, last visited at 0823 hrs on 09.07.2010
13. NLU Delhi: http://nludelhi.ac.in/RTIAct.htm, last visited at 0823 hrs on 09.07.2010.
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