Kunal Purohit 
New Delhi: Between February and August, through the gruelling election campaign and after, Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised that his third term in power would see “bigger” decisions.
“I have been working on a roadmap. I took advice from more than 15 lakh people in different ways… I have never issued a press note for this, I am revealing this for the first time.” February 9, 2024.
“I have been working with 2047 in mind for the past two years. And for that, I asked for opinions and suggestions from people across the country. I have taken suggestions from more than 15 lakh people on how they want to see India in the coming 25 years.” April 15, 2024.
“I have been working for the past 5 years on 2047. I have taken inputs from more than 20 lakh people. Based on this, I have worked on a Vision Document for 2047.” May 16, 2024.
“Crores of people have been consulted and their suggestions taken on board. We had invited people’s suggestions. And we are thrilled that crores of people have sent innumerable suggestions for Viksit Bharat, 2047.” August 15, 2024.
What was special about these decisions was that, he said, they were coming out of consultations at a scale seldom seen before. In interview after interview, Modi said tens of lakhs of people had been consulted, their suggestions incorporated, new schemes inked, older ones tweaked and ambitious plans were being drawn up.
Having faced criticism in the past for announcing major decisions, like the demonetisation of currency notes and a nationwide lockdown, without adequate consultation, this approach seemed novel for the Prime Minister and the scale made it impressive.
Except, the Prime Minister’s Office has no record of the consultations it can show.
Responding to multiple Right to Information (RTI) queries filed by this correspondent asking for details of the consultations that Modi said he had held and overseen, the PMO said the query was “not covered” by the definition of information, and that only information “as is available and existing in its records” can be provided.
RTI veterans said the PMO’s reply was another way of admitting it had no record of the said consultations.
“If the Prime Minister is holding consultative meetings, then there has to be a record of such meetings, there will be minutes of these meetings, the details of the participants, among other details,” former chief information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi said.
Gandhi was among those who had campaigned for the need for an RTI Act more than two decades ago.
He said it was “scandalous” for the Prime Minister’s office to not furnish records of the Prime Minister’s meetings and consultations. “If I was the commissioner here, I would have instructed them to state explicitly if they have the information or they don’t,” Gandhi added.
The PMO’s responses to the RTI queries cast a doubt on Modi’s repeated claims that a roadmap for the country’s future had been drawn up after wide consultations.
Several attempts made to reach the PMO for comment have been unsuccessful. The Wire called, sent numerous texts and an email to the Press Information Bureau’s Additional Director General in-charge of the PMO, Mattu JP Singh, but did not get a response. This report will be updated with the response as and when it is received.
15 lakh, 20 lakh, crores…
On February 9 this year, in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended a summit organised by the news channel ET Now.
At this Global Business Summit 2024, Modi exuded confidence, promised “bigger decisions” in the third term he was sure he was winning, and made a revelation — for a year and a half now, the Prime Minister told the audience, he had been finalising a detailed “roadmap” for the country by gathering suggestions from lakhs of people.
“I have taken suggestions from more than 15 lakh people and have been quietly working on it. I have never issued a press note for this, I am revealing this for the first time,” Modi said, with a laugh. The audience broke into a short, spontaneous applause.
The announcement made ripples — on social media, posts highlighting it went viral; and various news organisations reported it (here and here). The Press Information Bureau issued a release the same day mentioning the announcement.
After the first mention on February 9, government sources repeated the claim. A Press Trust of India report on March 3 about Modi’s meeting with his council of ministers the same day said there was “brainstorming” over a vision document for ‘Viksit Bharat: 2047’ and a “detailed action plan for the next five years.”
The PTI report added that there had been “wide-ranging consultations with state governments, academia, industry bodies” for over two years. “More than 2,700 meetings, workshops and seminars were held at various levels. Suggestions of more than 20 lakh youths were received,” one unnamed official quoted in the report said.
The claims were a crucial part of his campaign thrust — that the Prime Minister and his government had already made concrete plans for the future.
In March, for instance, Modi said that he had a 25-year-long roadmap “ready”. In May, he revised this and declared in a TV interview that his vision extended to the next 1,000 years.
However, by the end of the campaign, in the last election meeting he addressed, this number went down. Addressing the rally in Hoshiarpur, Punjab, Modi said plans for the first 125 days of his new government as well as the outline for 5 years was ready and the vision for the next 25 years was something his government “was rapidly progressing on”.
Through the election campaign, Modi repeated the claim he had originally made in February — that he was finalising a blueprint after having consulted lakhs of people. In an interview to ANI in April, Modi said he had consulted 15-20 lakh people and prepared a vision document for 2047. “I have taken suggestions from more than 15 lakh people on how they want to see India in the coming 25 years. And I contacted all the universities. I contacted different NGOs. And 15-20 lakh people gave their inputs,” he said.
In his Independence Day speech as Prime Minister for the third time, Modi reiterated this, but the figure had changed. “Friends, Viksit Bharat is not just a slogan for speeches. Behind it, there is kathor parishram,” he said. “Crores of people have been consulted and their suggestions taken on board. We had invited people’s suggestions. And we are thrilled that crores of people have sent innumerable suggestions for VB 2047.”
Detailed process, but no record
Modi’s claims of a roadmap created after consultations found frequent and detailed mention in his public utterances from February to August.
For instance, in the April interview with ANI, Modi spelt out the process of these consultations. “I contacted all the universities, I contacted different NGOs. And 15-20 lakh people gave their inputs. Then I took the help of AI and classified it subject-wise. I did a lot of technology work. I made a dedicated team of officers in every department,” Modi said, adding that he would send the roadmap to the states “as soon as elections are done”.
“I have already asked officials and (we) have broken it into three parts: 25 years, 5 years and 100 days. I don’t want to waste even a minute,” he said.
When the interviewer asked for a “trailer”, Modi cited the model code of election conduct but said, “Nothing is hidden.”
Yet, the PMO, in response to an RTI application as well as the first appeal filed by this reporter, not only did not share the details sought of the consultations but declared that these did not even qualify as information.
Dismissing the RTI application, the PMO said the request was “not specific and is in the form of a roving and open-ended inquiry.”
The response added that “the same was not covered by the definition of information as contained in section 2 (f) of the RTI Act, 2005.”
This section says ‘information’ is “any material in any form, including records, documents, memos, e-mails, opinions, advices, press releases, circulars, orders, logbooks, contracts, reports, papers, samples, models, data material held in any electronic form and information relating to any private body which can be accessed by a public authority…”.
‘Not a valid reason’
Activists said meetings such as those that Modi says he held for consultations on the roadmaps would require creation of records and documents, included under the above definition.
When this reporter filed an appeal against the non-response, the Appellate Authority in the PMO, an officer named Shobana Prasad, reiterated that the information sought was not covered under section 2(f) of the RTI.
Curiously, Prasad added that a public authority “is only obliged to provide such information as is available and existing in its records. Therefore, no information can be provided to you in this matter.”
Venkatesh Nayak, director of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative’s Access to Information programme, said this was “not a valid reason” to reject the RTI request and added that legal judgments require the public authority to spell out if it does not have a record.
“The Delhi high court has laid out the principle that it is the primary duty of a public authority to confirm or deny the existence of the record that is requested,” he said.
‘Editorial comment on inquiry’
This reporter then filed a fresh RTI, repeating the request for details of the consultations with an additional question asking for the response to state if no such meetings had occurred.
However, the reply from the PMO remained the same: that the query was a “a roving and open-ended inquiry.”
Nayak said such a response was not permissible under the RTI Act. “To make an editorial comment on the content of the question is simply not within the statutory powers of the PIO,” he said.
“But this has become increasingly common from Central public authorities,” Nayak said, referring to his struggle in getting responses.
Last week, a report by the Satark Nagrik Sanghathan, a transparency advocacy group, painted a dismal picture of the RTI Act’s implementation in the country — four State Information Commissions are defunct for months now, while the Central Information Commission is functioning with just three information commissioners, as against the strength of 11.