Description

In April 2021, the Right to Information Commission of Sri Lanka delivered an order to the Parliament of Sri Lanka to provide information on asset declaration information of members of Parliament when requested under the Right to Information. The appellant journalist Chamara Sampath requested this information in June, 2018. However the request was continuously denied by the Parliament. After the appeal process, it was after 3 years that the RTI commission made the order instructing the Parliament to issue requested information on MP asset declarations. While Parliament had further denied issuing those information, in January 2022, they filed a case at the Court of Appeal of Sri Lanka against the order made by the RTI commission. As almost four years have gone since the RTI request was made, the appeal process seems as a tactic to further delay the process. The personal data protection bill which would be described in the next section, could be utilized to prevent release of such information in future.