RTI application about human rights, not security: Activist

GURGAON: Activist Aseem Takyar said on Saturday his RTI plea was rejected by the CIC despite the fact that it concerned human rights and discrimination, and not security as it was made out to be.
Speaking to TOI, Takyar said he had sought information from the Prime Minister’s Office on June 7, 2013, about whether “after the assassination of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, any persons from a specific community/religion were recruited in the SPG and whether it is a violation of human rights to recruit personnel from a specific religion/community”.
But the commission saw no merit in the submissions made by Takyar and ordered that the SPG is an exempted organization under Section 24 of the RTI Act. Takyar had argued that Section 24 was not applicable as the information he was seeking related to human rights violation.
Takyar said that he has filed over 6,000 RTI applications in the past six years but the authorities had not replied to more than 500 queries. One such application was on expenditure on SPG security to Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi but the commission did not provide a reply to it either, he said.