Sarbajit Roy

Sarbajit Roy is a prominent Freedom of Information activist and public interest litigation advocate, notable for successfully opposing some of India's largest corporates in the regulatory domain.

An engineer from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani in 1980, Roy has the triple distinction of having filed the first Right to Information (RTI) request, the first RTI Appeal and the first RTI Complaint under India's Right to Information Act. Roy is well known for bringing private electricity utility monopolies under the scope of Freedom of Information hitherto applicable only to Government agencies.

In 2010, a court case Roy initiated triggered the revising of India's Right to Information law, as the Delhi High Court declared the existing regulations as illegal in his case. This has led to protests among RTI activists.

Actions by Roy

STBs don't meet BIS norms

In December 2003, Sarbajit Roy exposed that 2 million recycled Humax Cable TV set top boxes did not meet the regulatory norms set by the Bureau of Indian Standards for safety. The story was first published in the Pioneer newspaper, whose editor Chandan Mitra was then sued for defamation along with Roy, which motion was dismissed. Roy then moved the Supreme Court of India asking for cancellation of the Conditional Access System scheme for television in India. The Court allowed the few existing CAS installations to continue and granted leave to Roy to intervene again in case the government revived the scheme. The Korean manufacturer then refused to accept the defective STBs causing a huge loss to the importers.

BPO Hacking

Sarbajit Roy was the complainant in the infamous Karan Bahree case where a reporter from The Sun newspaper alleged in 2005 that India was an unsafe destination for BPOs as confidential data of UK citizens was being hawked on CDs. In his complaint Roy stated that to the contrary British banks routinely sent their confidential data on their defaulting customers (especially credit card defaulters) to shady call centres located in India operating without proper safeguards or regulation and the Sun story was an attempt to defame legitimate Indian BPOs. Although Roy's complaint was later dismissed in 2007 because he was not the owner of the affected computers, his petition resulted in significant amendments to India's Information Technology Act the next year.

Right to Information

No bar on voluminous requests for information

Although the RTI Act specifically provides that information has to be provided in the form requested unless it would disproportionately divert the resources of the public authority, some departments have been using this provision to deny citizens access to information. This issue was the subject of the first complaint filed with the Central Information Commission (CIC) by Sarbajit Roy. After hearing the parties the regulator held that the Act does not authorise a public authority to deny information even if the information sought is voluminous.

Unique Identity Authority of India held to be public body

On 18.November.2009 on a complaint from Roy, India's FOI regulator held the UIDAI to be a public authority liable to disclose its working to the public. Roy had alleged that the UIDAI, a controversial body headed by Nandan Nilekani to collect and store biometric IDs of Indian citizens, was fully operational, whereas The INDIAN Government contended that it never existed and had only a skeletal staff. RTI activists are divided on Roy's intervention in the matter, with some complaining that the CIC breaks its rules for him while others say Roy had "done the impossible". After this decision became public the UIDAI was ejected from their offices in the middle of the night and had to seek new accommodation.

  1. http://gyanpedia.in/tft/Resources/books/readings/4change.pdf
  2. http://www.indianexpress.com/storyOld.php?storyId=79937
  3. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rti_india/
  4. http://www.hindustantimes.com/Bloggers-protest-censure/Article1-122729.aspx
  5. http://www.geocities.ws/india_pil/
  6. http://www.indianexpress.com/news/desperately-seeking-blogging/9098/
  7. http://www.geocities.ws/india_pil/stb_pioneer.htm