Manipur Congress lashes out at Modi govtover weakening RTI Act, calls for urgent reforms

Manipur Congress on Sunday lashed out at the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre for systematically eroded and weakened the very essence of the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
Introduced by the erstwhile Congress-led UPA government two decades ago, on October 12, 2005, the Congress party organized various events across the country to mark the 20th anniversary of the Act’s implementation.
As a part of the event, Manipur Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) hosted a news conference in Imphal’s Congress Bhavan.
Addressing the news conference, MPCC senior spokesperson N Bupenda Meitei said the RTI Act was introduced by the then Congress-led UPA government at the Centre with the main objective of empowering citizens, promote transparency and accountability in government, and reduce corruption by providing a practical regime for citizens to access information.
However, since the BJP-led NDA government came to power at the Centre in 2014, the Act has been systematically eroded thereby weakening the very essence of the Act, he accused.
Meitei said that amendments to the RTI Act since 2014, particularly the 2019, gave the Central government control over the tenure and service conditions of information commissioners.
He alleged that the BJP’s actions were aimed at eroding democracy and undermining citizens’ right to information. He questioned provisions of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (2023), which exempt personal information from RTI, potentially limiting public access to data in the public interest and warned that this could be misused to hide corruption.
Meanwhile, despite having numerous post vacancies in the Central and state information commissions, the government did not fill up the posts, he pointed out while asserting that at the national level only two commissioners were in office against 11 sanctioned posts.
These failures weakened the commissions, he said, while noting that as of June 2024, over four lakh appeals and complaints remained pending across 29 commissions.
Coming to the state level, Meitei highlighted that the Manipur Information Commission remained severely understaffed and operating from a single room without its own infrastructure for the last 20 years.
The MPCC senior spokesperson demanded transparent filling of vacancies, longer hearings, online publication of RTI responses, asset disclosure by public officials, and an official website for the Manipur Vigilance Commission.
He, then, reaffirmed Congress’s commitment to defending RTI and ensuring public access to information as a constitutional right.
He further called for immediate reforms, including restoring fixed tenure of commissioners, revising the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, and strengthening citizen safeguards.
He warned that weakening the RTI Act would undermine democracy and accountability.
MPCC general secretary (org and media) Wahidur Rahman and MPCC spokesperson advocate Y Zakir Hussain also attended the news conference.