Last fortnight, the Supreme Court delivered a judgment reiterating that the office of the Chief Justice of India would fall within the purview of the Right to Information Act, 2005. The judgment settles an important question of law and theoretically, opens the door to a more transparent Supreme Court. But it remains to be seen whether the court will actually release any worthwhile information.
Unfortunately, the higher judiciary has been waging a war on the RTI Act, which requires all public authorities to both proactively disclose information to the public about themselves as well as respond to requests made by citizens for disclosure of specific information. But when we conducted a study earlier this year on the compliance of all the country’s High Courts with the RTI Act, we noticed a disturbing trend of courts not just ignoring the provisions of the act but also consciously deviating from the black letter of legislation.
RTI Rules of the High Courts
To begin with, there were problems with the individual sets of RTI Rules that each High Court is required to frame prescribing the cost and mode of filing applications for information. We noticed that several High Courts had formulated rules requiring applicants to make declarations of bona-fide intent as...
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