Which of the following entities do NOT fall under India's Right to Information Act of 2005?
Which of the following entities do NOT fall under India's Right to Information Act of 2005?
The National Security Guard (NSG) does not fall under India's Right to Information Act of 2005. The RTI Act exempts certain security and intelligence agencies from its purview, particularly concerning matters of national security. High courts, state legislatures, and law enforcement agencies, while they may have certain specific exemptions, generally fall under the RTI Act.
The NSG is a special forces unit under the Ministry of Home Affairs, and it may fall under the category of security and intelligence agencies which are generally exempt from the RTI Act, particularly when the information concerns matters of national security.
In the Central Act, section 8(1) lists all of the exemptions. • National Security or Sovereignty: As explained above, there is some information, which relates to India's national security, which could genuinely cause harm if it was released to the public. For example, information published during a conflict, detailing the number of soldiers defending a boundary, where they were positioned or their strategic plans. However, it would not be appropriate to use this exemption simply to keep a contract for the purchase of an air force fighter jet secret. This is common commercial information which should be made public to reduce the likelihood of corruption tainting the procurement process, and should not be withheld simply because it relates to defence.
The ‘right to information’ provided by the 2005 national legislation has a broad scope, covering ‘information held by or under the control of any Public Authority’. ‘Public authority’ includes any body established under the Constitution, or Centre or state law, or under delegated legislation, and includes bodies owned or controlled by government or directly or indirectly substantially Financed by government (even if they are NGOs). The reach of the legislation is therefore to all tiers of government and somewhat beyond that. In 2004 India’s Supreme Court conclusively interpreted article 19( 1)( a) of the Constitution of India to impliedly include the right to information in the constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and expression (People’s Union for Civil Liberties v Union of India), Five years before a similar conclusion was reached in Europe. National legislation was then enacted by the Centre as the Right to Information Act 2005 (RITA).
It is extremely positive that the Central Act makes all of the exemptions contained in section 8(1) subject to a "Public Interest Override" (see section 8(2) of the Central Act). What this means is that even where requested information is covered by an exemption, the information should still be disclosed to the applicant if the public interest in the specific case requires it.