Classifying information of public importance as secret raises questions about the govt's intent
The government's decision to classify 87 kinds of information as confidential, and thus requiring them to be kept secret, has met with resistance from media organisations and forums working for the right to information, or RTI.
The Federation of Nepali Journalists (FNJ), the umbrella organisation of all working journalists in the country, has condemned the government for trying to curtail the people's right to information by blocking information right at the source. Freedom Forum has shown alarm over the decision to have information classified by a government committee being headed by the Chief Secretary of the government.
The Information Classification Committee has classified information related to 87 policy areas into five broad categories – national sovereignty and national security, social harmony, trade secret and property rights, individual privacy and crime investigation. Under the new rule, the 87 types of information have been divided into groups of 29 each, which will be kept secret for 30, 20 and 10 years respectively. The media and civil society smell a rat in the new rule as even information of public importance has been classified as confidential, raising questions about the government's intent.
The Right to Information (RTI) Act was enacted by the parliament and came into force in Nepal in 2007.
Actually, right after multi-party system was ushered into the country after three decades of autocratic rule under the Panchayat sys-tem, the 1990 constitution had granted this right as a fundamental citizen's right, making Nepal the first country in South Asia to do so. It thus gave every citizen the right to be informed about government or non-governmental public activities, except when the law explicitly forbade it. The Committee's classification thus goes against the verdicts of the Supreme Court at different periods, Nepal's 2015 constitution and the RTI Act. The government is allowed to keep five types of information confidential, but when the committee decides that information related to even tax evasion, public procurement, meetings of dignitaries, any information submitted to the government for a decision should be kept secret for at least a decade, the new rule definitely calls for a review.
RTI is synonymous with democracy, as it makes the functions of the state open and transparent through continuous disclosure of information even when citizens do not seek it. Access to information also has its role in combatting corruption in the country. However, journalists can only play the role of society's watchdog and make the government or others accountable if they have the information they need.
True, all countries have a system of classifying information, labeling it, for instance in the United States, as confidential, secret and top secret depending upon the amount of damage that a certain information would cause to national security if it were released or leaked.
But why should the Nepali government be hiding information related to tax evasion or public procurement or official meetings with high-level government dignitaries for decades, unless it is trying to shield some people either in the government, political party or business?
A version of this article appears in the print on January 31, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.
