The Senate Committee on Information and Broadcasting on Thursday gave final touches to the draft Right to Information (RTI) Act 2013, proposing some amendments, and asking the Information Ministry to finalise it by the first week of July.
The body also rejected Defence Ministry’s bid to dump the RTI, asking it to withdraw its remarks.
The meeting was chaired by Senator Farhatullah Babar and attended by Senator Syed Zafar Ali Shah, the information secretary and senior officers from the Information Ministry. The three-member committee had been set up in September, 2012, to finalise the freedom of information law which had already been drawn up by the Information Ministry after broad-based consultations.
Briefing media personnel, Babar said the freedom of information law had been hanging on fire since 2002 when General Musharraf, acting under pressure from foreign donors, came up with a law that was designed to obstruct access to information.
A new law was drafted in 2008 by the Information Ministry in consultation with all stakeholders including media organisations, provincial governments and members of the civil society, he said. However, it could not be tabled in Parliament for one reason or the other. In the meantime the 18th amendment made the right to information a constitutional right by inserting a new article in the constitution, he said. This necessitated that the proposed law was revisited and brought into conformity with the new constitutional provision.
During the meeting Babar also took strong exception to the advice of the Defense Ministry that stated, “The subject Act may please be kept pending till NOC of Ministry of Defense”.
Strongly criticising these “thoughtless, provocative and insolent” remarks, Senator Farhatullah Babar said more than 8 months had passed since the Defense Ministry had been asked to give its views on the proposed law but it had failed to do so and now had the audacity to ask for pending work of the Parliament. “Never before has an executive organ been so contemptuous towards a committee of the House,” he said and demanded that the ministry withdraw its remarks.
He welcomed the assurance given by the Information Ministry to update the law in light of recommendations made in meetings and bring up the revised law before the Senate committee by the first week of July.
He said until recently Senator Pervez Rashid as member of the Senate information committee had been vociferous in supporting the RTI law and expressed hope that as federal minister for information, he will now play his role in bringing the lingering issue to its rightful end.
