Late Justice PB Sawant Played a Stellar Role in Drafting and Campaigning for the RTI Act in India
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The tenacious campaign for the passing of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, which was steered by Aruna Roy’s National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information (NCPRI) in the 1990s, received great impetus, thanks to justice PB Sawant, who, as chairman of the Press Council of India, insisted on drafting the law. On Monday, at the age of 90, justice Sawant peacefully passed away due to cardiac arrest at his home in Pune.
While the law drafted by him went through a series of updates through several committees later, Nikhil Dey, founder member of NCPRI, says that justice Sawant’s conviction that media must also fight for access to information, spurred him to volunteer to write the first ever draft of the RTI Act. And for that, Justice Sawant took immense efforts to ensure that it was strong enough for citizen’s access to information from public authorities.