by Moiz Mannan
Non-resident Indians have finally been integrated into their home country’s transparency initiative. Much like the right to vote, the right to information for Indians living abroad had remained largely on paper.
The Department of Posts and Telegraphs has at last launched an online system for NRIs to directly purchase the e-IPOs (electronic Indian Postal Orders) which are required to file applications under the Right to Information (RTI) Act of 2005.
The Right to Information (Regulation of Fee & Cost) Rules, 2005 provide that a request for obtaining information should be accompanied by an application fee of Rs10 by way of cash against proper receipt or by demand draft or bankers cheque or Indian Postal Order payable to the Accounts Officer of the public authority.
In order to facilitate filing of RTI applications in Central Government public authorities by Indians living abroad, the Central Government in May last year agreed ‘in-principle’ to start sale of Indian Postal Orders through internet on payment in foreign currency.
The decision came after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) gave its nod to allowing Indian citizens to purchase IPOs on the net using their credit cards. The matter was stuck for a long time as the RBI had put a number of technical conditions, including security issues, before the service can be opened up for consumers. The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), the nodal department for implementation of the Act, also took its time in providing the requisite information to start the project.
Indians abroad would now be able to log on to the Department of Posts website and register themselves. After doing so, they would need to upload a copy of their passports as proof of citizenship and then make the payment for the RTI online.
The move will allow them to then directly file their RTI query related with central government departments online. The department will then send the RTI directly to the concerned information officer who would also be able to log on and verify that the payment has been made.
While hundreds of thousands of RTIs have been filed since the RTI Act was passed in 2005, Indians abroad have had a tough time arranging the fees and asking their government for information. Until now, Indians abroad had a difficult time paying the Rs10 fee required with each RTI application as it was difficult to purchase Indian Postal Orders (IPO) or even a demand draft
in rupees. The struggle to streamline the RTI fee payment had started in 2008 when RTI activist and retired Air Commodore Lokesh Batra was visiting his daughter in Boston. He wanted to file an RTI application and realised that there was no easy way of paying the fee of Rs10. He then started a petition signed by several hundred Indians across the world asking the government to simplify the process.
NRIs in the US had been leading a campaign for their right to use the RTI Act. In November 2007, a group of 73 young US-based NRIs jointly wrote to the Indian Embassy in Washington, DC for information through RTI on the Nandigram violence. They wanted to know the death toll and access the correspondence between the state government and the Ministries of Home and External Affairs. Five days later, the Embassy sent a non-committal reply: “The information is not available with us”. They were unable to file an application under the Act without the Embassy’s assistance.
In 2008, the Supreme Court granted all overseas Indians the right to seek information from any public authority, organisation or institution under the Act, saying the right is available to all persons of Indian origin (PIOs) who have obtained the status of Pravasi Bharatiya.
The ruling was made by a bench comprising Justices S B Sinha and Cyriac Joseph on an appeal petition by a US-based NRI Dr Kunal Saha, after he was denied information by the West Bengal Medical Council about details of the medical treatment given to his late wife, Dr Anuradha Saha, at a Kolkata hospital.
In June 2007, the Indian embassy in Washington, DC brought all its operations under the purview of the RTI Act as a result of the persistent efforts of volunteers from the Association for India’s Development (AID), a non-profit group based in the United States. This meant that the RTI Act was extended to all Indian citizens living in the US. The Supreme Court of India ensured that the RTI Act covers all persons of Indian origin, anywhere in the world.
The Central Information Commission in New Delhi issued an order around April 2007 bringing all missions abroad under the purview of the RTI Act.
According to an NDTV report, citing a survey conducted by AID among sections of US-based NRIs in 2007, 81 percent of them had paid bribes at various stages in India. The NRIs said they had bribed the authorities for international drivers’ permits and passports while leaving India. At the time of re-entering India, they had to pay bribes to Customs; during their stay in India they paid bribes to obtain land records. Some others have great difficulty in getting income tax refunds.
The current facility, though, covers only central government organisations and now the demand for states to follow suit is gaining ground. The Peninsula
