RTI Accountability in India: Why It's CJP's First Demand
Right to Information (RTI) in India is dying — delays, denials, attacks on activists. Here's why CJP's first demand is full RTI accountability and what reform looks like.
By CJP Watch Editorial
The Right to Information Act, 2005 was one of the most powerful citizen tools any democracy has ever passed. Twenty-one years later it is dying — slowly, deliberately, and largely in silence. Restoring full RTI accountability is the Cockroach Janta Party's first demand. This article explains why.
What the RTI Act Was Supposed to Do
The RTI Act gave every Indian citizen the right to ask any public authority a question and receive a documented answer within thirty days. Filing fee: ten rupees. No reason required. It was, on paper, a quiet revolution: a postal money order standing between a citizen and any government file in the country.
What Has Happened Since
Three things have happened. First, the Central Information Commission and most State Information Commissions have been allowed to run with vacant posts, creating backlogs of three to five years on appeals. Second, the 2019 amendment removed the fixed tenure of Information Commissioners, ending their independence from the government they are meant to police. Third, over a hundred RTI activists have been killed in the last two decades — a number no functioning democracy should tolerate.
The Three Failures of RTI Today
- Delay — appeals routinely take three years or more. By the time the answer arrives, the question no longer matters.
- Denial — public information officers cite vague exemptions to refuse routine information that is plainly public.
- Danger — activists asking questions about land, mining, contracts, or police misconduct are physically attacked, often fatally, almost always with impunity.
What CJP Is Demanding
CJP's RTI demand has four concrete planks. One: fill every vacant Information Commissioner post within ninety days of a vacancy. Two: restore fixed five-year tenure for Information Commissioners and remove government discretion over their terms. Three: introduce an automatic statutory penalty on any Public Information Officer who misses the thirty-day deadline without recorded cause. Four: create a national protected status, with central security cover where required, for RTI applicants whose queries touch on land, contracts, or law enforcement.
Why Transparency Is a Youth Issue
Most RTI queries in India today are not filed by journalists or NGOs — they are filed by ordinary citizens trying to find out why their pension is delayed, why their exam result is held up, or why their land record is missing. Nine out of ten of those filers are young. Strengthening RTI is not a niche civil-society agenda. It is a survival tool for the generation that has the most to lose from opacity and the least leverage to demand answers any other way.
What You Can Do This Week
CJP encourages supporters to file RTI requests about stalled appointments, missing benefits and public works. The party presents collective information requests as a way to press for accountability. Readers seeking the party's assistance should consult its official channels; CJP Watch reports on these proposals and does not coordinate party volunteers.
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