The NRIs in the US have been leading a campaign for their right to use the Right to Information Act from abroad even as the government admits their “issue” is complex” and may need an amendment in the law.

 Take the case of 73 young NRIs across the US who, on November 15, 2007, jointly wrote to the Indian Embassy at Washington DC for information through RTI on the Nandigram violence.  They wanted to know the death toll and access the correspondence between the state government and the Ministries of Home and External Affairs. Five days later, the Embassy sent a non-committal reply: “The information is not available with us”.

 “We tried to explain about the spirit of the Act and our difficult situation of not being able to file an RTI without the Embassy’s assistance, but to no avail,” recounts Somasundaram Kumaresamuthusamy, one of the applicants.

Or the case of Arun Gopalan, based in Montgomery Village in Maryland, who was asked to re-direct his RTI application on the annual water accounts of Narmada Basin to the “Public Information Officer concerned”.

 “I filed an RTI application with the Home Department, Government of Maharashtra. The application required a court fee of Rs 10, which I could not procure here in the US. My friend did not put the stamp on the appeal and as a result my appeal was not processed. Thus the lack of mechanism to pay fee from the US is a major hindrance to my ability to seek information,” Los Angeles resident Vishal Kudchadkar informs Minister of Overseas Affairs Vayalar Ravi in a letter dated June 22.

... contd.