Right to Information in the Era of E-Governance: A Powerful Tool to Check Corruption in India

Abstract

Right to information is the fundamental right to every citizen under Article 19 (1) of the Constitution of India and RTI Act is a special legislation to protect this right. India took 56 years after coming into force of its Constitution and 82 years after passing colonial Official Secrets Act, to provide right to information to its citizens. E- Governance means electronic governance and this concept is of the recent origin in the field of Information Technology. Chapter III of the Information Technology Act, 2000, explicitly mentions the concept of Electronic Governance and gives it a legal recognition. This paper is an attempt to discuss the evolution of E-governance, its digital authenticity and analysis of right of information in the present era of e-governance. Further, the paper also dealt how it is a powerful tool to bring accountability, transparency in the governance, which ultimately paves the way check and control corruption in public life. This paper is based on doctrinal method of research and uniform method of citation is applied.