New Delhi, (The Telegraph): Several prominent RTI activists have announced a boycott of Narendra Modi's address at a convention tomorrow to mark the transparency law's 10th anniversary after invitations to some of their colleagues were withdrawn citing the Prime Minister's security.

Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey, Amrita Johri, Anjali Bhardwaj, Lokesh Batra, Shekhar Singh, Venkatesh Nayak and others - associated with the National Campaign for the People's Right to Information (NCPRI), which spearheaded the campaign for the RTI - dubbed the recall of the invites to their peers "unprecedented".

They said they would attend the other sessions at the two-day event organised by the Central Information Commission at Vigyan Bhavan.

The protest comes at a time the Modi government has been accused by sections of the activists and the Opposition of keeping key CIC posts vacant, thereby delaying applications and undermining the law.

Dey said the original invite he got suggested finance minister Arun Jaitley would deliver the inaugural address. The revised one he received said Modi would do so.

Dey said many of his colleagues were initially allowed to participate in the entire programme, only to be later asked to stay away from the inaugural session.

Bhaskar Prabhu, an RTI activist from Maharashtra, reached Delhi two days ago on a CIC invite. "I later received an email from CIC that the invitation is being withdrawn as the Prime Minister is attending the event. I wasn't to ask why I couldn't go if the Prime Minister is attending," Prabhu said.

D. Rakesh, from Hyderabad, was also among those whose invites were revoked. He said IB officials had visited his home and were quizzing his parents about him.

"The IB undertook background checks and verification of RTI activists across the country. Many were sent an email saying they were not being invited due to security reasons," said a statement from the NCPRI, which recently held its own session on the RTI's 10 years.

Dey questioned the checks and said their boycott of Modi's speech was meant to protest the "arbitrary and undemocratic measures to restrict people's participation and to shut down an important forum of engagement between the people, the commission and the government" .

Dey said the restrictions had come after his forum was initially encouraged to suggest as many participants as possible.

Activist Bhardwaj said over a hundred activists were invited to such conventions every year except in 2014 when it was not held as there was no chief information commissioner.

Subhash Chandra Agrawal, another RTI activist, blamed the CIC for the mess. He said he would attend the inaugural session but not the rest of the convention.#

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