RTI key to freedom of speech

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Deliberate ambiguity or dumping huge information makes it a herculean task to select required information. Dumping non-up-dated enactments will amount to indirect secrecy and is also deemed refusal to give information sought.

How can a law student research if official bare Acts are not made available? Why the government should drive you to private market to purchase updated bare Act?

The law students should raise such issues and make the government responsive and responsible. Great liberty of thought, wonderful right under Article 19(1) (a), is rendered useless without right to information

Freedom of speech and expression is a natural right of a person, recognised by the democratic constitutions the world over. It is so dynamic that it keeps pace with the social thinking and innovations.

New developments in technology and legal front have either expanded or shrunk the contours of the constitutional contours of this freedom.

It is surprising that in our independent India, a guaranteed constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression existed without ‘right to information’ for forty five years.

Liberty of thought is an absolute right which none could interfere. Without exercising this liberty of thinking, a citizen cannot express, and without information liberty of thought cannot be put to use.

The right to information is, thus, most necessary requirement to speak and write. What were we expressing all these years without information and right to information?

Article 19 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights says: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

In Peoples Union for Civil Liberties v Union of India, the Supreme Court said the right to information was a facet of freedom of speech and expression as contained in the Article 19 (1)(a) of the Constitution of India.

Justice Chalameshwar who released my book on ‘RTI Use and Abuse,’ in Delhi, said that the Andhra Pradesh government reported to him when he was the Additional Advocate General that the Business Rules of AP Secretariat were ‘top secret’ and cannot be shared with anyone.

It’s a surprise that the steel frame of government, i.e., public servants consider the business rules are only to be seen by the heads of department and for others it is a confidential document.

How will the employees conduct themselves according to rules when rules were kept secret? This shows how our governments were senseless.

The GOs issued by the Government in AP were not available for those who are supposed to follow them. Some persons, who understood the need of those GOs,

collected them by bribing persons working in the Secretariat and went on publishing books of compiled GOs. They earned huge profits for one, so huge that he could build a sprawling law college in competition.

You all know that ignorantia juris non excusat. Law does not excuse ignorance of law. But tragedy is it does nothing to make law known to its people.

Not only has that law and state presumed knowledge of law in every citizen simply because such law was notified in official gazette, which most of us have not seen.

Recently a student of National Law School filed an RTI request with Ministry of Law at Centre. He wanted to study the evolution of rights of spouses and needed bare the Act of Indian Christian Divorce Act of previous century made by the British rulers of India.

Law publishers did not publish it because it does not have market. He referred to India code, which is official website where the bare Acts are placed. But it is so complex,

confused and problematic to read, that one has to spend hours to make out sentences intervened by nonsense sentences and notes. He sought to have a certified copy of that Act under RTI.

Answer of the ministry is as usual “record is not available’. I will also give another example, that student also asked for the updated copy of Code of Civil Procedure, after incorporating all amendments, which are more than 100.

The answer of ministry was that all amendments are separately available which can be compiled by the applicant. If a student of law has to compile all the amendments just to know the latest updated copy, it takes years. This is denial of information through glut of information.

Deliberate ambiguity will amount to denial. We all know that it is difficult to decipher the prescription by most of the doctors. Engineers are trained in college times to write in a very symmetrical and systematic manner.

I wonder why doctors are not trained. In every medical college, there should be strict training in legible writing of prescriptions. It is humorously said if a doctor writes a love letter, the girl has to rush to pharmacy manager to decipher and understand his love.

Similarity of drug names and doctor’s negligent prescription of a wrong drug can spell danger to a life. A doctor prescribed “dionil” (used for diabetic patients), instead of “diavol” (a digestive medicine).

Maximum dose of dionil is one or two tabs per day, but a patient of digestive problem was administered two tablets of “dionil” three times a day. That led to hypoglycaemia and young girl went into coma for months.

Her life was reduced to a vegetative state completely. Ambiguity of expression breaches the right to life. Deliberate ambiguity or dumping huge information makes it a herculean task to select required information.

Dumping non-up-dated enactments will amount to indirect secrecy and is also deemed refusal to give information sought. How can a law student research if official bare Acts are not made available?

Why the government should drive you to private market to purchase updated bare Act? The law students should raise such issues and make the government responsive and responsible.

How can a law writer do research and express his views in the absence of such information? If he spends years in compiling the amendments, when does he think and comment?

Great liberty of thought, wonderful right under Article 19(1) (a), is rendered useless without right to information. As per Section 4 of RTI Act,

it is the duty of the Ministry of Law to provide bare Acts to citizens. Once same is sought under RTI Act, there is no escape legally.

The new legislation RTI Act made by Parliament in 2005 has added a new dimension to freedom of speech and expression; while Supreme Court’s innovative prescription of ‘doctrine of postponement of publication’ imposed a restriction on this freedom.

The truth is not complete defence to charge of defamation or contempt of court. Thus the status of truth as proclaimed in India’s official motivational slogan “Satyamev Jayathe” is under test of fire.

Thus, the Right to Information decides the real Constitutional contours of freedom of speech and expression especially in a country where more than 25 per cent people are illiterate and below the poverty line.

By:Madabhushi Sridhar