Which of the following statements is/are correct? 1. The abolition of the Official Secrets Act, 1923 was recommended by the Second Administrative Reforms Commission 2. The Right to Information Act was enacted in 2005 Select the answer using the code given below:

Correct — C, Both 1 and 2. Statement 2 is a date: the Right to Information Act received presidential assent on 15 June 2005 and came fully into force on 12 October 2005. Statement 1 is the recommendation in the very first report of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission, titled Right to Information — Master Key to Good Governance and submitted in June 2006, which said the Official Secrets Act, 1923 should be repealed and the provisions genuinely needed for national security folded into a chapter of the National Security Act. The Commission's reasoning was that a colonial statute drafted to protect the government from its own public sits badly with a law that gives the public a right to that government's files.

• (a)1 only — It rejects the enactment year of the Right to Information Act, which is 2005. The Act replaced the Freedom of Information Act, 2002, which had been passed but never brought into force.
• (b)2 only — It rejects the Second Administrative Reforms Commission's recommendation on the Official Secrets Act. Repeal of that Act was the headline proposal of the Commission's first report.
• (d)Neither 1 nor 2 — Both statements hold, so this is the weakest option available. The 2005 date alone eliminates it.

The Right to Information Act is built on a presumption of disclosure: every public authority must publish a large body of information on its own motion under section 4, and anything not exempted under section 8 must be supplied on request within thirty days, or forty-eight hours where life or liberty is at stake. The Official Secrets Act, 1923 works in the opposite direction, penalising the communication of official information, and section 22 of the Right to Information Act therefore gives the newer law overriding effect where the two collide.

The Second Administrative Reforms Commission was constituted in 2005 under Veerappa Moily and produced fifteen reports, and the sequence matters here — the transparency report came first, in 2006, immediately after the Act it was commenting on. A candidate who knows only that the Commission's first report was about the Right to Information can accept statement 1 as consistent, since a report on transparency is exactly where a recommendation to repeal a secrecy statute would appear.

• The Right to Information Act, 2005 received assent on 15 June 2005 and came into force on 12 October 2005.
• The Second Administrative Reforms Commission was set up in 2005 and its first report was Right to Information — Master Key to Good Governance, 2006.
• That report recommended repealing the Official Secrets Act, 1923 and moving the genuinely needed provisions into the National Security Act.
• Section 22 of the Right to Information Act gives it effect notwithstanding anything inconsistent in the Official Secrets Act.
• The Act replaced the Freedom of Information Act, 2002, which was never brought into force.

• Dating the Act to 2002, which is the never-notified Freedom of Information Act.
• Assuming the Official Secrets Act has been repealed; the recommendation was made but not acted on.
• Mixing up the first and second Administrative Reforms Commissions, of 1966 and 2005.

A pairing of one date with one recommendation, where the date alone knocks out two of the four codes.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The first report of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission was on

  • (a)Ethics in Governance
  • (b)Right to Information
  • (c)Local Governance
  • (d)Crisis Management

  Answer(b) Right to Information — the report titled Right to Information — Master Key to Good Governance, 2006.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Right to Information Act, 2005, information concerning the life or liberty of a person must be provided within

  • (a)24 hours
  • (b)48 hours
  • (c)7 days
  • (d)30 days

  Answer(b) 48 hours — the ordinary limit is 30 days, shortened to 48 hours where life or liberty is involved.