ARC has analyzed threadbare the provisions of Civil Services Conduct Rules which are in direct and indirect conflict with the RTI Act regime. It has taken into account of the Shourie committee recommendations and has suggested modifications in the existing Civil Services Conduct Rules applicable to the employees of the Central as well as the State governments. Currently prevalent conduct rules and the Manual of Office Procedure explicitly debar the government officials to communicate any information considered sensitive by them to the public. We have already seen that these provisions have used by the unscrupulous officials and politicians to hide their murky dealings. Therefore ARC recommended following changes-

Every Government servant shall, in performance of his duties in good faith, communicate to a member of public or any organization full and accurate information, which can be disclosed under the Right to Information Act, 2005.

These changes are to be made to both Civil Services Conduct Rules as well as the Manual of Office Procedure. This will not only protect the interests of honest civil servants, it will also facilitate the flow of information under the RTI Act, 2005 to the general public.

Regarding the Confidentiality Classification of the information by various departments, the ARC, in line with the Shourie Committee recommendations, has noted that besides Official Secrets Act, it’s the tendency to classify information by the government departments that has been abused way too much by the officials. ARC has recommended some 11 categories of information which deserve any kind of classification, which restricts the discretion of the officials in classifying information to a large extent. Regarding the duration of classification ARC has recommended that documents once classified as “Top Secret” or “Secret”, should remain so classified as long as required but not exceeding 30 years. Documents classified as confidential and restricted should remain so for a period not exceeding 10 years. However, the competent classifying officer may, for reasons to be recorded in writing, authorize continued classification beyond the period prescribed above if information, the disclosure of which would cause damage to national security or national interest. ARC has also restricted the rank of officer to sanction the top secret classification to a document to Joint Secretary and above.

Above steps as recommended by the ARC, if implemented, are going to go a long way in developing a culture of transparency in the administration. Before RTI came into force, the administrative culture in India was totally alienated from the general public due to the all pervasive secretive behavior. In fact one thinker has mentioned that corruption breeds in secrecy. The culture of secrecy as developed in Indian administration was one of the biggest reason as well as perpetrator of the malady of corruption at every level of the government. It was in this backdrop that RTI was introduced as a legally sanctioned right of the citizens. In our next article we will see the machinery proposed to implement RTI and ARC recommendation on that.