Last month, the Maharashtra government revised the rules for implementing The Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI Act), making it more expensive, cumbersome and potentially life-threatening for information-seeking citizens. Veteran anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare announced that he would fast unto-death, if the new rules were not rolled back. He also demanded that the government consult with the citizens, the primary stakeholders of the transparency regime, RTI experts, former Information Commissioners and other stakeholders, before making any changes to the Rules. Vociferous opposition from civil society has resulted in the state government ultimately halting the implementation of the new Rules. As a result, the RTI Rules, made in 2005 and amended in 2012, will continue to apply. Whether the Maharashtra government shelves the new Rules altogether or sits down with the citizenry to discuss how best to strengthen the RTI regime in Maharashtra, remains to be seen.The latest avatar of the RTI Rules was fashioned without any kind of consultation with the citizenry, who remain the primary stakeholder of the transparency regime envisaged by the law. Ironically, Maharashtra was ranked second on the Union government’s 2021 Good Governance Index, which has ‘citizen-centric governance’ as one of the defining criteria for assessment. However, the state’s long tradition of enabling people to give their views and opinions on what should or should not be in an RTI law or rule was completely ignored this time, as the government raised the application fee from Rs 10 to Rs 30, hiking photocopying charges from Rs 2 to Rs 5 per page. Under the new Rules, an appellant could withdraw an appeal pending before the Maharashtra Information Commission, no questions asked. But they would have had to pay the ‘reasonable cost’ which the Commission would deem fit to impose. If the appellant failed to pay up, his/her assets would be confiscated and auctioned away – just how British colonial administrators collected arrears of land revenue from farmers.The government did not bother to ask the people whether their pending appeals against public authorities should abate in case they passed away before a decision was made. In such an eventuality, the respondent public authority would have had to only ‘produce evidence of death’ and the Commission would have been within its powers to close the case “as the right to information is available only to the particular applicant citizen of India who has requested the information”, said Rule 23(2). In certain cases, the Commission could have closed the case on its own, based on the evidence available with it.The media has reported the alleged murders of at least 18 individuals since 2010 because of their RTI activism in Maharashtra. In the very first case of RTI activist Satish Shetty, who was murdered in broad daylight for taking on the real estate mafia in Pune, nobody has been found guilty yet. This despite his brother running from pillar to post seeking justice for more than a decade and a half despite the involvement of the Central Bureau of Investigation to identify the perpetrators under the watchful eye of the Bombay High Court and even the Supreme Court of India. The RTI Rules could have been potentially weaponised by unscrupulous elements to silence citizens who endeavoured to expose corruption and wrongdoing in government.Transparency advocates in Maharashtra publicly highlighted the problematic aspects of the rules, as soon as they were published. Last week, we submitted a detailed critical analysis of these RTI rules to the state government, along with practical suggestions for improvement. Would the Government have paid attention to only persuasive arguments about what was wrong with the new RTI rules in the absence of public pressure? Are there systemic checks and balances to act like brakes on executive adventurism, as one would expect in a constitutional democracy based on the rule of law? This historic juncture must be utilised to tackle two major constitutional issues which go to the heart of these questions. They have remained unresolved to date. The first is about the extent and manner of oversight which our elected representatives can exercise on the rule-making powers of governments. The second is the imperative of making all laws and rules in a consultative manner by opening up spaces for citizen participation. But first, a primer on the difference between law-making processes and rule-making procedures in our country, for the uninitiated. Even after nearly eight decades of independence, where laws and rules to govern us are made on our soil and by our elected representatives, not by unfamiliar MPs in the distant British Isles, like it was before independence, public knowledge about these matters is scarce. A brief intro to the law-making processUsually, governments of the day table Bills on subject matters which are constitutionally within their jurisdiction to initiate; members of the concerned legislatures debate over their provisions with or without the benefit of detailed examination in small committees. Members may move amendments to the original clauses during the debate. Only when a simple majority supports their adoption in the original or amended form, and the President or Governors (as the case may be) give their assent, they become law. These laws are then published in the concerned Official Gazette and brought into force immediately or when the concerned governments are ready to implement them. The same procedures apply to a ‘private member’s bill’ i.e., draft legislation introduced by MPs or MLAs of their own accord and the government allows it to be passed, which is a rarity. Constitutional amendment Bills require a specified proportion of MPs to support the proposals and in some cases involving federal matters, ratification from at least 50% of the state legislatures is necessary, before they become law.So theoretically speaking, there is some level of discussion on the contents of the Bill in our legislatures before enactment. Recent media reports of the alleged admission by a large number of MLAs that they voted in support of an anti-blasphemy law in Punjab without even reading the Bill may be exceptions. Instances of laws being passed through a voice vote after the opposition has walked out of the house is becoming commonplace. The RTI Bill itself was passed by the parliament in 2005 after the opposition parties walked out of the sitting. Even Union budgets for 2026-27, 2023-24 and 2018-19 were approved by the Lok Sabha with barely a few minutes of debate, according to media reports. Rule-making procedure – in briefWhether passed with or without extensive debate and examination-in-committee, laws empower the executive i.e., the Union or state governments to make rules for their implementation. For example, the RTI Act only states that every RTI application must be submitted along with an application fee without specifying the amount an applicant must pay. Nor does it explain what procedures must be followed for submitting and deciding appeals and complaints. These matters are left to the respective governments to flesh out through the rule-making power because they are the implementing authorities. Where a law does not prescribe an “implement by such and such date”, it is up to the concerned government to frame the rules – which is called ‘subordinate legislation’ (because they are subordinate to the parent law) – and publish them in the official gazette before beginning enforcement of the law. The RTI Act is one example of the former category of laws – all but the information and request and appeal/complaint provisions became operational soon after the President of India signed on the Bill and the text of the law was published in the Gazette of India. The RTI application and appeal/complaint provisions became operational six months later in October, 2005. In contrast, the Whistleblowers Protection Act became a law in May 2014 but it remains stillborn because the Union government has not made the rules required to implement it, for more than a decade.Rules become operational as soon as the government publishes them in the official gazette. There is no requirement of seeking prior approval of the concerned legislature at the central or the state level. If a law which originated as a private member’s bill vests rule-making powers in the government, the same procedure applies for initiating its enforcement. Can legislatures change the rules once notified?This is the crux of the first constitutional issue. Rules which a government makes in order to implement any or all provisions of a law are also called ‘delegated legislation’. In other words, the concerned legislature which passed the law, delegates its powers to the concerned government to flesh it out by providing the details like the examples discussed above. A wealth of jurisprudence that has developed in our high courts and the Supreme Court, over the decades, makes it crystal clear that the rules made by the government must strictly align with the letter and the spirit of the ‘parent statute’. The power of rule-making must not be abused by the government to create new rights or impose new penalties which find no mention in the main law, or curtail the scope of the right(s) it recognises or creates. Maharashtra’s now-halted RTI Rules crossed these redlines on multiple accounts.Legislatures exercise oversight on the manner of use of the rule-making powers they have vested in the government. This is why; governments are required to table the rules they have operationalised in the very next session of the legislature after the rules are published in the official gazette. In some cases, a year or two might lapse before the government wakes up to this ‘procedural’ requirement, but that is a matter best left for discussion, another day. Once the rules are tabled in the legislature which passed the parent law, its members (MPs or MLAs/MLCs) can move amendments to modify them or even nullify them partially or totally. Usually, a period of 30 days is available for this exercise either in one session or successive sessions of the legislature. If a modification or annulment proposal tabled by an MP or a state legislator receives majority support in the house, the rule will have to be implemented in the modified form or discarded entirely, if it has been nullified. Of course, a savings clause is always provided to protect acts already done by the concerned authorities before such modification or annulment, but similar acts will not be permitted thereafter once the rule has been changed or thrown to the dustbin by the concerned legislature. Usually, the committees on subordinate legislation of the legislature discuss the rules in detail, call for explanations from the government if they find that any of them is not aligned with the parent law and make recommendations for change. This is where the first constitutional issue with regard to the rule-making power arises.Rule-making under the RTI ActThe RTI Act is a law made by the parliament, but it vests the rule-making power in both the Union and the state governments for determining primarily the fees payable for obtaining information and the procedures to be adopted for disposing appeals by the respective Information Commissions, amongst other things. But there is a clear distinction between the powers of oversight exercised by the parliament and the respective state legislatures. Section 27 explains the scope of the rule-making power. The provision with regard to legislative oversight over this power is given in Section 29. Section 29(1) of the Act explains the duty of the Union government to table the rules it makes in both houses of the parliament and the latter’s power to amend or even nullify them in the following manner:Extract from the RTI Act, 2005So, the Union government must table the rules it has notified under the RTI Act, in both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha when they are in session. The Houses have 30 days in one or successive sessions to modify or annul any or all rules. Both Houses must agree to the changes. Anything done under the rules before they were modified or annulled will not be held invalid. But Section 29(2) requires the state government to only inform the concerned State Legislature of the fact that it has notified rules to implement the Act. The State Legislature does not have the power to make any modification or nullify the rules, if it is not happy with them. This is what might have happened in Maharashtra if the Government had not halted the implementation of the new RTI Rules.The RTI Act is not unique in this regard. Many laws enacted by the parliament after independence contain similar provisions where rule-making power is vested in state governments but the respective state legislatures have no power to modify them. In more recent times, examples of such a schema of delegated legislation can be found in the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 (RERA), the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, the Dam Safety Act, 2021 and the Boilers Act, 2025. In all these statutes, state legislatures cannot make any changes to the rules notified by the respective state governments.There are other schemas adopted for making subordinate legislation. For example, under the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act, 2016, the Union government can make rules after consulting with the state governments, but rules are tabled in the parliament which can modify or discard them. Under the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017, state governments can make rules after taking the previous approval of the Union government but the state legislatures do not have the power to modify or annul them. How well such schemas worked is a discussion best left for another day.Why are the oversight powers of state legislatures restricted in this manner?The core issue of oversight powers is connected to the constitutional scheme of division of powers between the parliament and the state legislatures and the respective governments. It is well known that the Seventh Schedule of the constitution lists the subjects on which the parliament and state legislatures can make laws. List I – also known as the Union List – is the exclusive domain of the parliament. States cannot make laws on those subjects. List II – also called the State List – is the exclusive domain of the state legislatures. The parliament cannot make laws on the subjects included in this List unless two or more states pass a resolution under Article 252 of the Constitution inviting the parliament to make a law for them on a particular subject mentioned in this List. That law becomes applicable in other States if their legislatures adopt a resolution to make that law applicable within their territories. The Clinical Establishments Registration and Regulation Act, 2010, is an example of a law the parliament enacted under Article 252 after a resolution was adopted by the state legislatures of Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Sikkim. Even in this case the schema for exercising the rule-making power between the Union and the states is just like that of the RTI Act. List-III – also called the Concurrent List – contains subjects on which both the parliament and State Legislatures can make laws. Article 254 of the Constitution explains which law will prevail over which in case of any inconsistency. When rules are made by the Union government under a law which only the parliament is competent to enact, the latter can modify or annul them. State legislatures can also do the same with rules made by the respective governments under laws which only they are empowered to enact. However, who has oversight over the exercise of rule-making powers of a state government under a law enacted by the parliament remains unresolved till date. This is the first constitutional issue that remains unresolved till date.This issue was discussed in detail by Lok Sabha’s Committee on Subordinate Legislation in its 20th report submitted in 1979. It was headed by Somnath Chatterjee, who later became the Speaker of the 13th Lok Sabha when the RTI Bill was enacted. One of its members was P.A. Sangma, who was the Speaker of the 11th Lok Sabha. Another member was Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s daughter Kumari Maniben Patel, who was elected from Mehsana, Gujarat, on a Janata Party ticket.The committee heard the views of the Union law ministry and also invited the views of the state legislatures and governments. Its views are summarised below:A law enacted by the parliament on a subject under the Union List: The Committee observed that the state legislatures do not have the power to modify Rules made by state governments under a law enacted by the parliament on a subject included in the Union List. The reasons for such a restriction are discussed in detail in the enclosed report. First, rules made by the state government cannot be laid in the parliament because no Central Minister would be responsible for framing them, so they cannot be explained or defended by the Union government. Second, rules framed by state governments would be based on local conditions and material facts within their knowledge and unless all these are made known to the parliament, the discussion on the rules would not be comprehensive. Third, even if such rules would be tabled and discussed, it would be “impossible to draw a line to stop criticism of the state government concerned or their officers either directly or indirectly. Such a discussion was likely to be misunderstood by the state government and affect Centre-State relations”, the Committee remarked. Moreover, Union ministers would have no material to reply to such criticism. So, when state governments make rules under a law enacted by the parliament on a subject under the Union List, those rules are only required to be tabled in the House so that the legislature is informed of the action taken to implement the law. However, the Committee opined that some sort of oversight on the exercise of the rule-making powers is necessary even if it be merely recommendatory in nature. Despite considerable opposition from the Union law ministry, the Committee recommended that the state legislatures may in plenary sessions or through their respective committees on subordinate legislation make recommendations to the state government to change or withdraw a Rule that is not in tune with the provisions of the parent Act. However, the Committee was clear that state legislatures cannot annul or amend any offending rule under a law made by the parliament on a subject which is exclusively within its domain.A law enacted by the parliament on a subject under the Concurrent List:The Committee also observed that where a law is enacted by the parliament under a subject in the Concurrent List, the state legislature can modify or annul any Rule made by the state government. However, this will require an enabling provision in some other state law to empower the state legislature to act in this manner. At the time of authoring its report the Committee noted that only Uttar Pradesh and Orissa had amended their respective General Clauses Acts to empower the state legislatures to modify the Rules made by the state governments under a law dealing with a Concurrent subject. The Committee recommended that the Union law ministry follow-up with the other state governments to amend their own laws in a similar manner. A detailed examination of Maharashtra’s General Clauses Act, 1904, indicates that no action has been taken on this recommendation, till date.The relevant extracts from the report of the Committee headed by Somnath Chatterjee are given in the images below:Extract from the 20th report of the Lok Sabha Committee on Subordinate Legislation (1979)Extract from the 20th report of the Lok Sabha Committee on Subordinate Legislation (1979)Extract from the 20th report of the Lok Sabha Committee on Subordinate Legislation (1979)Extract from the 20th report of the Lok Sabha Committee on Subordinate Legislation (1979)Extract from the 20th report of the Lok Sabha Committee on Subordinate Legislation (1979)In which List of the Seventh Schedule does RTI appear?The Statement of Objects and Reasons attached to the RTI Bill tabled in the parliament in December 2004 did not connect it to any subject mentioned in any of the Lists given in the Seventh Schedule of our Constitution. Instead, it was stated that the proposed legislation would provide an effective framework for effectuating the right of information recognised under Article 19 of our Constitution. Does this mean that the RTI Act pertains to List III as States can also make laws to give effect to fundamental rights? There is no entry in this List under which RTI can be fitted unequivocally. Or can it be reasoned that the parliament passed this law under its residuary powers of legislation recognised under Article 248? This will put the RTI Act in the domain of exclusive jurisdiction of the parliament. So, state legislatures will not be able to modify or annul Rules notified by the respective Governments. The parliamentary committee did not deal with this scenario in its 1979 report. But it is also an undeniable historical fact that nine states had operational RTI laws for several years before the Central RTI Act was passed. None of them were challenged in the courts for being unconstitutional.Having read about the constitutional gap with regard to the oversight on rule-making powers of state governments, in the seminal work on administrative law authored by noted jurist Professor S.P. Sathe (with whom I had extensive discussions on the eve of the first workshop on RTI we conducted for the media at YASHADA, Pune, a day after both Houses of the parliament passed the RTI Bill in May 2005), I made a public mention of it at the National RTI Convention organised by the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information in Shillong in 2011. The then Joint Secretary of the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) who spoke afterwards (those were the days when senior government representatives readily participated in such civil society events), publicly disagreed that there was any such constitutional gap.So, a few weeks later, I sent all the research about the constitutional gap that I had put together along with the relevant extracts of the 20th report of the Lok Sabha Committee on Subordinate Legislation, to the Joint Secretary, DoPT urging him to initiate action to bridge the constitutional gap. The purpose of this advocacy was to find a way of harmonising the major disparities in the RTI rules made by various state governments, heads of legislatures and the chief justices of high courts across the country. Fee rates and appeal rules are different across jurisdictions; new exemption clauses were introduced by Courts and legislatures above and beyond those listed in Section 8(1) of the RTI Act and quite a few imposed word limits and subject matter restrictions on RTI applications and charged fees for deciding appeals even though none of this was permissible under the RTI Act.Although I was not expecting a reply, very surprisingly, the Joint Secretary wrote back within a few days acknowledging the factual matrix underpinning my claims about the existence of a constitutional gap with regard to oversight over rule-making powers under the RTI Act. He not only thanked me for highlighting this issue but also assured me that the matter would be taken up with the Union law ministry. A copy of that reply is given below.Reply of DoPT’s joint secretary.Soon afterwards, the gentleman was transferred to another assignment and the matter languished without any resolution. So, hoping that his predecessor might have taken some action, I filed an RTI application with the Union law ministry in March 2012, asking among other things, whether any communication had been received from the DoPT on the subject of legislative oversight over the exercise of rule-making powers of state governments. The ministry replied in the negative. The text of the RTI application and the reply are given below: I sent a copy of the entire correspondence along with my RTI application and the reply received to the then Joint Secretary, DoPT in July 2012 and later to his boss – the Secretary, DoPT – in December 2015. Neither of them bothered to even acknowledge receipt of the communication. So, to the best of my knowledge this constitutional issue remains unresolved till date.Was the Maharashtra government required to hold public consultation on the RTI Rules?One of civil society’s main grievances regarding Maharashtra’s revised RTI rules is about the opaque manner in which it was notified – without prior consultation with the citizens of Maharashtra. In fact, the mention of ‘under postal certificate’ (UPC) and ‘registered post’ as permissible methods for the State Information Commission to serve a notice of hearing in an appeal or complaint proceeding indicates how out of touch with reality were the blessed souls who drafted the latest RTI Rules. The Department of Posts discontinued the UPC service in 2011 and registered post service in September 2025. So, is a state government duty bound to hold prior consultation to make rules under any enactment? What does the Union government’s pre-Legislative Consultation Policy of 2014 say?The UPA government instituted a pre-Legislative Consultation Policy shortly before it went out of power in 2014. This policy requires every ministry and department to publish the text of the draft law it proposes to table in the parliament along with a brief justification for such a law, its essential elements, broad financial implications and an estimated assessment of its impact on the environment, fundamental rights, lives and livelihoods of affected people. All of this must be in simple language. People must be invited to give suggestions within a period of thirty days. The summary of feedback/comments received from stakeholders and the general public must be placed on the official website of the ministry/department which is also required to hold public consultations with all stakeholders. When a draft Bill is sent to the cabinet for approval to be tabled in the parliament, the cabinet note must contain a brief summary of the feedback received from the people. After the Bill is tabled in the parliament, the summary of the pre-legislative process must be placed before the department-related standing committee if it is tasked with vetting the bill. In short, this seminal policy was intended to involve people in the law-making process at the initial stages itself so that problem areas in the draft bill are ironed out and the possibility of any opposition to the law after enactment is minimised. Law-making was intended to become truly participatory.However, the NDA government has applied this policy to draft laws very selectively and, in many cases, it has refused to allow many important Bills to be referred to the parliamentary committees for detailed vetting. In February 2022, the then Union Minister of Law and Justice, Kiren Rijiju told the parliament that paragraph 11 of the policy “gives sufficient leeway for the Ministry/Department to eschew the Pre-Legislative Consultation Policy on the ground that it is not feasible or desirable to do so. In December 2025, his successor, Arjun Ram Meghwal, told the parliament that there is no proposal to make pre-legislative consultation mandatory for all major legislative proposals. Interestingly, at the time of writing this piece, the very document containing the text of this policy has disappeared from the ministry’s website where it used to be hosted earlier.Paragraph no. 4 of the pre-Legislative Consultation Policy suggests that rule-making must also be done in consultation with the people in the following words: “As a matter of practice, a provision regarding the previous publication of rules should be made in all new principal legislations.” However, this policy does not apply to state governments. So, unless the parent legislation requires rules to be made in consultation with the people, there is no statutory duty on governments to make rules in a transparent manner. Public consultation for rule-making is a century-old prescription in IndiaMany readers might not be aware that the tradition of consulting people before making rules and byelaws under any law was established in our country, more than a century ago. Section 23 of The General Clauses Act, 1897 which applies to the Union government and the Union territories, states that if a law requires rules to be made after ‘previous publication’, then the rule-making authority must publish a draft of the rules to inform people likely to be affected by them, mention the date by which the draft will be finalised for implementation, allow them to make submissions about what needs to be changed in the draft rules and consider all such submissions and objections before finalising it. Maharashtra’s General Clauses Act, 1904, is almost as old as its central counterpart and contains a similar provision (Section 24) for involving people while making rules under any law enacted by the State legislature. The General Clauses laws explain the meaning of terms commonly used in other laws in order to maintain consistency of usage such as: “act”, “affidavit”, “chapter”, “collector”, “document”, “enactment”, “father”, “financial year”, “month”, “High Court”, “immovable” and “movable property”, “local authority”, “month”, “oath”, “official gazette”, “person”, “registered”, “ship”, “sign”, “son”, “swear”, “will”, “year” etc. They also explain how the coming into force of laws and their repeal are to be understood and applied; how distances should be measured, time should be computed and that wherever laws use masculine gender they must be understood to include ‘females’ and that singular shall include the plural and vice versa.The only catch with regard to participatory rule-making is that unless a law made by the parliament or the state legislature specifies that rules must be made only after ‘previous publication’, governments are under no obligation to consult with the citizenry. The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, is a rare example of such a law requiring both the Union and state governments to make rules for its implementation only after ‘previous publication’. The rule-making provisions in the RTI Act do not contain such a stipulation for either the Union or the state governments to make rules after ‘previous publication’. Further, as the RTI Act is not enacted by Maharashtra’s legislature, the government did not find it necessary to hold a consultation process before replacing the 2005 RTI Rules. Interestingly, Maharashtra’s own RTI Act passed in 2002 before the Central RTI Act came into being, required the government to make rules for its implementation only after ‘previous publication’, except when the rules were made for the first time (Section 18). In other words, any change in the original set of rules notified by the Maharashtra government under that law could not be made without giving people the opportunity to file objections and suggestions for improvement. With the winding up of the state level RTI law, Maharashtra seems to have given the good practice of public consultation in the domain of RTI rule-making, a quiet burial. Whether this tradition will be revived now, remains to be seen.In conclusion: What can RTI activists, transparency advocates do?Given these major constitutional gaps, RTI activists and transparency advocates, not only in Maharashtra but across the country, can take a number of steps.First, we must demand that the Union and state governments give statutory cover to the pre-Legislative Consultation Policy by incorporating it in the respective General Clauses Acts. This is a good way to ensure that all laws, rules, regulations and bye-laws are made in a participatory manner by involving citizens in the processes. Second, we must demand that all States amend their respective General Clauses Acts to empower legislatures to exercise effective oversight on the rule-making powers of the respective governments under laws enacted by the parliament on subjects under the Concurrent List or for giving effect to fundamental rights guaranteed by our Constitution. These fundamental changes will go a long way to make the world’s ‘largest democracy’ more participatory than it is, right now.Third, both the parliament and state legislatures must find a mechanism to ensure legislative oversight over the rules made by the state governments under laws which only the parliament can enact. Fourth, the RTI Act delegates rule-making powers to the heads of the state legislatures and the chief justices of High Courts, but they are not even required to be laid in any legislature. Rule 317 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in Lok Sabha (17th Edn., 2024) requires the setting up of a committee on subordinate legislation: “to scrutinize and report to the House whether the powers to make regulations, rules, subrules, bye-laws etc., conferred by the Constitution or delegated by the parliament are being properly exercised within such delegation.” Rule 204 of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the Rajya Sabha (9th Edn., 2016) contains a similar stipulation. These rules do not carve out any exception when the rule-making power is vested in the heads of the state legislatures and the high courts. The presiding officers of legislatures must take up these matters in their next conference to plug the constitutional gaps. In the meantime, if the Maharashtra government puts in place a progressive set of RTI Rules after holding effective public consultation, that’s well and good. However, if the next set of RTI Rules also contain deficiencies, RTI activists must demand that the state government table the latest RTI Rules in both houses of the Legislature. MLAs and MLCs must be approached to move motions recommending modification of the problematic aspects of those Rules. Legal challenges to the Rules must be mounted only if this exercise of legislative advocacy fails to deliver the desired results.Venkatesh Nayak is Director, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, New Delhi. Views expressed are personal.