Panaji:
Member of the National Advisory Council Aruna Roy, said today any attempt to dilute the Right
To Information (RTI) Act by the Prime Minister or anybody else should be resisted as the RTI was "strengthening the foundations of democracy."
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had said yesterday that RTI must not affect "deliberative processes" in the government as it could discourage honest officers from expressing themselves fully.
Roy who is also the member of the National Coalition for the Promotion of the Right to Information, which was also among the prime movers for the RTI Act coming into existence
"Efforts to dilute and weaken it by the Prime Minister or anybody else have to be resisted at any cost, by writing letters or staging dharnas or by other means," she said.
"They (government) are saying that because of the RTI their officers are not willing to write notes. I say that they never wrote notes. A section of officers wrote a note and many people just signed on it," Roy said.
Commonly, officers refuse to put down their opinions, she said. "The noting has to be done up to the under-secretary level," said Roy, who spearheads National Campaign for People's Right to Information (NCPRI).
"This business of not noting indicates that RTI is exposing that officers are inefficient. They get paid to write note, if they are not writing notes, they are not doing their basic job."
The Prime Minister should ask such officers to leave, she said.