The Government has made changes in the RTI Act to correct the names of two intelligence organisations exempted from providing information under the transparency law.
As per the amendments notified by the DoPT, the ‘Aviation Research Centre of the Cabinet Secretariat’ and ‘Special Frontier Force of the Cabinet Secretariat’ have been incorporated in the list of exempted organisations under the RTI Act as earlier, the names mentioned in the Act were Aviation Research Centre (ARC) and Special Frontier Force (SFF).
The changes have been made to rightly show allegiance of the two organisations to the Cabinet Secretariat. Both the ARC and SFF are among over 20 intelligence and security agencies including IB, RAW and CBI exempted from providing information under the RTI Act to any citizen.
According to the 2012-2013 annual report of the Central Information Commission, the Cabinet Secretariat is said to have rejected only 18 RTI applications under Section 24. The ARC is the air wing of external intelligence agency RAW. The SFF is said to have been raised at the end of the Indo-China war in 1962.