Years after ratification, RTI act failed to provide justice to information seekers

Vikas Sharma. Dated: 10/14/2017 10:47:30 AM

Vikas Sharma
Jammu, Oct 13
Despite the passage of more than 13 years, when a law on Right to Information enacted in Jammu & Kashmir, there are many public authorities especially the government departments which are still unaware about RTI legislation.
“Initially it was J&K RTI Act 2004 enacted during PDP-Congress Government way back in 2004 and was amended in 2008 and finally J&K state enacted present version of RTI law in 2009 which is known as J&K RTI Act 2009. But, even after so many years of its enactment, there are many public authorities especially the Government departments which are still unaware about RTI legislation,” said a top government official.
“It is not the fault of the government officers who do not respond to RTI queries, but very less number of RTI applications are filed before some departments in J&K as compared to other Govt organizations in other states. Recently State Information Commission (SIC) decided an RTI appeal wherein an information seeker was not only denied information by J&K Police but the officers of the department seemed completely ignorant about this law,” told the senior official to young bites.
As per the detailed survey conducted by an NGO, there are around 2.44 crore applications under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, which are pending before the various state and centre departments in India.
The RTI Act, which empowers citizens to seek information related to governance from government departments, was enacted in 2005.
“During the year 2005-06 to 2015-16, total number of RTI applications received by public authorities in India including the Union and state governments are 2,43,94,951,” the report claimed in its recent survey. Among states, Maharashtra received the highest number of RTI applications, it said.
During the year 2005-06 to 2015-16, the Government of India received 57,43,471 RTI applications, whereas Maharashtra got 54,95,788 such queries during 2006 to 2015.
A total of 13,48,457 second appeals and complaints were received by all information commissioners — in the central and state information commissions, excluding Tamil Nadu — during 2005-06 to 2015-16, it said. Second appeals and complaints are filed with either the central or state information commission if people are not satisfied with the response of the departments concerned on their RTI applications.
Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Sikkim are not preparing mandatory annual reports regularly. Hence, data of these states does not reflect real situations, the report said.
“Analysis of data suggests that RTI has achieved a lot but clearly, the transparency Act itself is losing teeth. The nation surely needs a fresh struggle against corruption to bring forth the untapped potential for which the RTI Act was enacted,” said another government official.
The time is ripe for the state as well as the centre governments to tighten their noose around their officials, who has been designated as PIOs to give proper reply to the RTI activists, so that the huge pendency should be cleared soon and people could the justice under this special act.

 

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