Activists of Association for India’s Development U.S. demonstrating outside the Indian embassy in Washington, D.C., demanding that the Indian government withdraw its amendments to curtail the Right to Information Act.After persistent efforts from volunteers of the Association for India’s Development, the Embassy of India in Washington, D.C., has implemented India’s landmark Right to Information Act, 2005, bringing its operations fully under the act’s purview.
However the path of getting RTI to the U.S was not all that rosy. Volunteers of AID have been campaigning since November of 2006 to get the Indian Embassy officials in Washington to implement the RTI act. A number of emails and phone calls were made. Later, realizing that the communication with the embassy officials was proving to be futile, a few volunteers started communicating directly with the Chief Information Commissioner in India, Wajahat Habibullah, seeking his intervention. The Central Information Commission issued an order around April 2007 bringing all the missions abroad under the purview of the RTI act. It took 90 days more of campaigning by AID volunteers to get the Indian Embassy in Washington D.C. to accept its first RTI petition.
An NRI Victory: Right to Information Act
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