The Whistleblowers Protection Bill
The Whistleblowers Protection bill
The Union Cabinet has cleared a bill to protect whistleblowers and punish those exposing identity of people disclosing information. The proposed legislation, Public Interest Disclosure and Protection to Persons Making The Disclosure Bill, 2010, provides the Central Vigilance Commission powers of a civil court to hand down harsh penalty to people revealing identity of whistleblowers.
The CVC will be empowered to take action against those who reveal the identity of whistleblowers or those who threaten the whistleblowers while those who make frivolous complaints will also be liable to punishment. The killing of whistleblowers Manjunath Shanmugam and Satyendra Dubey and many Right to Information activists by anti-socials and vested interests has prompted the government to draft the Bill.
Several activists who exposed corruption by bureaucrats and political leaders have been killed or threatened by mafia elements, it was pointed out. * Dubey, an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur alumnus, was killed in Bihar for exposing corruption by contractors in building the national highways. * Shanmugam, originally from Andhra Pradesh, and an officer in the Indian Oil Corporation(IOC), was killed after he exposed adulteration in petrol pumps in Uttar Pradesh. He was an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Lucknow. *
There has been a rise in the number of attacks on RTI activists across the country recently. * Activist Amit Jethwa was shot outside the high court in Ahmedabad last month. Jethwa had named BJP's Junagadh MP Dinu Solanki while exposing illegal mining in the Gir forest area in Gujarat. * In Maharashtra, RTI activist Datta Patil was found dead in Ichalkaranji in May. He had exposed a corruption racket which had resulted in removal of a police official and disciplinary action against Ichalkaranji corporation officials. * Satish Shetty, a whistleblower who exposed land scandals,
The Union Cabinet has cleared a bill to protect whistleblowers and punish those exposing identity of people disclosing information. The proposed legislation, Public Interest Disclosure and Protection to Persons Making The Disclosure Bill, 2010, provides the Central Vigilance Commission powers of a civil court to hand down harsh penalty to people revealing identity of whistleblowers.
The CVC will be empowered to take action against those who reveal the identity of whistleblowers or those who threaten the whistleblowers while those who make frivolous complaints will also be liable to punishment. The killing of whistleblowers Manjunath Shanmugam and Satyendra Dubey and many Right to Information activists by anti-socials and vested interests has prompted the government to draft the Bill.
Several activists who exposed corruption by bureaucrats and political leaders have been killed or threatened by mafia elements, it was pointed out. * Dubey, an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur alumnus, was killed in Bihar for exposing corruption by contractors in building the national highways. * Shanmugam, originally from Andhra Pradesh, and an officer in the Indian Oil Corporation(IOC), was killed after he exposed adulteration in petrol pumps in Uttar Pradesh. He was an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Lucknow. *
There has been a rise in the number of attacks on RTI activists across the country recently. * Activist Amit Jethwa was shot outside the high court in Ahmedabad last month. Jethwa had named BJP's Junagadh MP Dinu Solanki while exposing illegal mining in the Gir forest area in Gujarat. * In Maharashtra, RTI activist Datta Patil was found dead in Ichalkaranji in May. He had exposed a corruption racket which had resulted in removal of a police official and disciplinary action against Ichalkaranji corporation officials. * Satish Shetty, a whistleblower who exposed land scandals,