তথ্য অধিকার আইন

The Daily Star, Thursday July 14, 2022

Shamsul Bari and Ruhi Naz

Over the last two decades, most of South Asia has adopted right to information (RTI) laws, also known as freedom of information (FOI) or access to information (A2I) laws. With a shared colonial past and a deeply-entrenched culture of official secrecy and unbridled exercise of government power over people, the countries in this region provide a unique opportunity to observe how a law that seeks to establish transparency and accountability in governance has fared in these common contexts. Having previously looked at the status of the RTI regimes in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka, we turn today to Pakistan.

Pakistan is, in fact, the first country in South Asia to have adopted an RTI law – albeit as an ordinance by a military ruler, in 2002. However, it soon became evident that the government’s motivation in this regard was influenced more by donor pressure than serving public interest. The new law had no teeth to…Read More