MUMBAI: The murder of yet another Right to Information (RTI) activist, this time in Bihar, has re-ignited the calls for a national legislation to protect the rights of whistleblowers. Ram Thakur (48), a member of the Bihar NREGA Watch (to monitor the working of the government's flagship employment scheme) was allegedly shot dead on the evening of March 23. Thakur had allegedly been receiving death threats for speaking up against corruption in his village.
"The continued attack on whistleblowers underscores the urgent need for a strong whistleblower protection bill. However there has been no movement on the whistleblower bill for more than one year," says Ruchi Gupta of the National Campaign for Peoples' Right to Information (NCPRI), adding that a weak whistleblower bill was introduced in Parliament in the monsoon session of 2010, and was passed in the Lok Sabha in the winter session of 2011.
The delay in the passage of the bill comes even as hundreds of activists across the country have been assaulted and some killed in the course of their exposes of corruption. To name a few was Satyendra Dubey, an IIT-Kanpur civil engineer who accused his employer, the national highway authority of widespread corruption and was killed in 2003 and S Manjunath, an Indian Oil corporation manager who exposed a racket in adulterated petrol and was shot dead in 2005 and Satish Shetty.
Transparency in governance is one of the hallmarks of a good democracy and it essential that the rights of those who work towards bringing such transparency are safeguarded. That is precisely why the Whistleblowers Protection Bill 2011 has been mooted. It seeks to establish a mechanism to register complaints on any allegations of corruption or willful misuse of power against a public servant. The bill mandates that any person making a public interest disclosure must identify himself and the vigilance committee shall not disclose his/her identity. Such laws are already in place in a number of countires including UK, USA, Canada and even smalle countries like Uganda and New Zealand.
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