The Right To Information Act of 2005 has ushered our democracy into one where every individual can demand transparency and accountability. For over a decade it helped revolutionize governance from village to the prime minister's office. It made several government departments make records public by default under the section 4 of the act.
The open data movement in India has always been beneficial of the act and it's provisions in promoting transparency in the digital age. The current government has introduced an RTI amendment bill to reduce the independence of the Chief Information Commissioners. The bill has already been passed in the Lok Sabha and is being introduced in Rajya Sabha soon for consideration and passing. While there are different reasons being provided by the government to do this, none of them require the bill to be passed without public consultation or discussions by the parliamentary standing committees. Please raise your voice demanding not to amend this bill by calling your Members of Parliament from Rajya Sabha. Since the bill is being promoted by the ruling coalition, it would be better to primarily reach them out and ask them to have public consultation and larger consultation through parliamentary committees. You can find the contact details of MPs on rajya sabha website at this link. Please only call when the house is not in session (before 11 a.m in the morning and after 6 p.m in the evening) http://164.100.47.5/Newmembers/memberaddlist.aspx Without the right RTI framework and independence of Information Commissioners, transparency might become just another buzzword. Please make more people aware of the consequences too. Regards, Srinivas Kodali -- Datameet is a community of Data Science enthusiasts in India. Know more about us by visiting http://datameet.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "datameet" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/datameet/CAGnvSPHpn4EMksttT2vo%3DROWoiafLazAwcubqzXrGqK2gNB3tQ%40mail.gmail.com.
