The Madras high court on Friday ordered notice to the Union government on a public interest litigation (PIL), challenging its notification, exempting the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) from the purview of Right To Information (RTI) Act.
A division bench comprising Chief Justice M.Y. Eqbal and Justice T.S. Sivagnanam, however, declined to stay the operation of the notification dated June 9, 2011, and posted after three weeks, further hearing of the PIL filed by advocate S. Vijayalakshmi, an RTI activist.
According to the petitioner, since the expose of the CWG, 2G and other scams and the successful Lokpal movement, the Union government had become jittery on corruption. Fearing that successive exposes would lead to people’s movements such as the Tunisian, Egyptian and Yemeni uprisings, the Union government instead of becoming more transparent had become reactionary and maliciously decided to grant blanket exemption for the CBI from the RTI Act. Even after issuing the notification, the government had not published the same fearing that a blatantly illegal notification would be challenged and struck down by the courts, she added.
She said Section 24 of the RTI Act exempts only intelligence and security agencies, whereas the CBI was neither, but a mere investigative agency, akin to a neighbourhood police station. Hence every police station and other investigative agencies such as income-tax, customs, forests, electricity and labour deserve deserve illegitimate exemption. The plea that investigative data require confidentiality has been adequately taken care of by parliamentary wisdom vide Section 8(1) (g) and (h) of the RTI Act.