Ex-CIC Wajahat Habibullah asks Rajasthan CM to restore RTI in textbooks

Jaipur: In a letter to chief minister Vasundhara Raje, India’s first chief information commissioner Wajahat Habibullah has expressed dismay at the deletion of the section on the Rightto Information from textbooks used in state government schools.
“Rajasthan is arguably the karmabhoomi of RTI,” the former CIC said in the letter noting that the movements in remote villages of the state for transparency and accountability that emerged in the 1990s “blossomed into a countrywide demand for the enactment of a strong RTI law.”
“Section 26 of the RTI Act places a statutory duty on state governments to educate the citizenry, particularly the disadvantaged segments of society, about their rights to seek and receive information from public authorities.It is important to inculcate the values of transparency and accountability amongst children and the youth in order to realize the objective of the RTI Act spelt out in its Preamble, namely, creating an informed citizenry in order to make India a vibrant democracy where the governed can hold the government and its instrumentalities accountable for their actions,” Habibullah, who now serves as chairperson of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, said.
“I should have assumed that your government could rightfully take pride in the fact that Rajasthan has become the role model of the world for people’s movements demanding open government,” he wrote.
Last month, a pillar was unveiled at Chang Gate, Beawar, about 60 km from Ajmer, where a 40-day dharna was held 20 years ago demanding RTI. It was as a culmination of that movement that the law was enacted.