ISLAMABAD: The political elite and bureaucracy will always resist Right to Information (RTI) laws, but these laws need to be fought for and advocated for the sake of the people.

This was said by Prof Dr Jagdeep S. Chhokar, one of the founders of the Association for Democratic Reform, India at the regional conference on the Right to Information in South Asia on Wednesday. Dr Chhokar said over the past decade, 49 RTI activists have been killed in India.

`That is a big number when compared to the small number of people fighting for access to information,` he added.

India passed an RTI law in 2005 and the struggle to get it implemented has brought about serious consequences, Dr Chhokar said. He added that a case has recently been filed in the Supreme Court of India by the civil society against the amendments to the RTI law.

`Both the leading parties in the country want to amend the RTI law to make it weaker from our point of view,` he said adding that India also had laws but faced problems with implementing them.

Michael Karnaicholas from the Centre for Law and Democracy in Canada then talked about the issue of implementation and said such issues arise when governments are not willing. `Ethiopia has a very good RTI law, which has not been properly implemented and we also have countries which have average laws but the right to information is a basic part of their constitutions,` he said.

He said ratings for RTI laws are measured on the strength of the legislation and not according to its implementation.

`In Canada, the law calls for response by the concerned departments within 30 days when the average response time is between 60 and 70 days,` he added.

According to a rating of RTI laws across the world, Serbia, Slovenia and India have the best right to information laws while the Sri Lankan draft bill ranks 7th best in the world.

Pakistan`s draft bill stands at 84th position.

Participants of the conference, which was hosted by PILDAT, agreed that the most important part of right to information legislations are the parts concerning national security andforeign affairs.

Talking about protecting and disclosing sensitive information under RTI, Senator Mushahid Hussein Syed, who is the chairperson of the Senate Standing Committee on Defence, urged the federal government to approve the RTI Bill at the earliest. He said that the bill had been approved by the Senate on July 15, 2014 and was still waiting to be tabled in the National Assembly.

He said: `We urge the government to not delay the passage of the bill on account of concerns about the security of sensitive information on defence and foreign relations.

Regarding the importance of the right to information in the country, he said several commissions have been made to probe important events like the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the US raid in Abbotabad. The findings of these commissions were never made public when the public had a right to know what the commissions found, he said.

Former Interior Secretary Tasneem Nooranu agreed that government officials resist RTI laws because they don`t want others to know about their activities.

Other speakers talked about similar challenges regarding RTI laws in South Asia and that countries of the region could learn a lot from each other in this regard.

Also attending were Chairman of the Freedom Forum Nepal Taranath Dahal, Luwie Ganeshathan from the Centre of Policy Alternatives in Sri Lanka.