In the monsoon session of the Indian Parliament in 2019, Amendments were made in the anti-terror law and the Right to Information Act. What are the significant changes as a result of these Amendments? Analyse.

UAPA Amendment Act, 2019

• The parent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, already provided for organisations to be listed as terrorist organisations; the 2019 amendment allows the Union to designate individuals as terrorists as well.
• An individual so designated faces a specific legal stigma and asset-freeze logic even without a completed trial, which the government defends as matching UN listing practice and as closing a gap where a person left a banned group and continued violence.
• The National Investigation Agency’s reach was widened to investigate such cases with less dependence on State police as the first mover.
• Critics argue that executive designation without adequate prior judicial filter chills dissent, duplicates ordinary criminal law, and is hard to reverse in practice.

RTI Amendment Act, 2019

• The RTI Act, 2005, had fixed the Central Information Commissioner’s term at five years (or until 65) and aligned salary with the Election Commissioner, a design meant to copy institutional independence.
• The 2019 amendment empowers the Central Government to prescribe tenure, salary, allowances, and other service conditions for the CIC and Information Commissioners at the Centre, and correspondingly influences the State Information Commission pattern through Central prescription.
• The official claim was flexibility and the need not to equate Information Commissions with constitutional election machinery.
• The rights claim is that a government that is the largest RTI respondent now writes the Commissioners’ terms, weakening the appearance of an independent information watchdog.

Joint significance

• One session therefore tightened the security State’s listing power and loosened statutory insulation of the transparency State.
• Significant change is not only text: UAPA designation can travel into bail, passport, and employment life; RTI change can travel into how boldly a Commission orders disclosure against the same executive.
• Courts, parliamentary opposition, and civil society remain the residual checks; the amendments themselves moved both statutes toward greater Union executive room.