Info on your RTI application a call away

You will soon have a platform to seek instant replies to your Right To Information queries, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Sep 17, 2007, 02:47:39 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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You will soon have a platform to seek instant replies to your Right To Information queries. The Central Information Commission (CIC) plans to set up a national call centre for RTI by next year.

Prompted by the huge success of RTI in the one-and-a-half years since the enactment of the law, the CIC has got a private firm to draw up a plan for the call centre, to help applicants seek information from government departments. “It (the call centre) will be a type of facilitator where the person answering the call will give direction to a query on how to use RTI to seek information,” Wajahat Habibullah, Chief Information Commissioner, told the Hindustan Times.

But unlike the Bihar RTI line, the CIC’s call centre will not be a platform to file RTI applications. In January this year, the Bihar government started a unique model wherein a person can file an RTI application by simply making a call to the helpline. “As soon as the call is made to the RTI line, Rs 10 gets added to the person’s telephone bill. His voice is recorded and treated as an RTI application. Even if the person has to file an appeal under the RTI Act, a call is more than enough,” said Arvind Kejriwal of Parivartan, the organisation that helped the state government set up the call centre.

The CIC’s model will be slightly different. Apart from providing general information on the RTI Act, it will also give callers information about pending appeals with the commission. "Information like when the appeal with the CIC will be heard and what is the status of the case will be provided instantly," Habibullah said.

If all goes well, the CIC plans to make the call centre operational by next year. "We have made the proposal for the 11th Five-Year Plan,” Habibullah said, adding that he was optimistic about getting the necessary approval from the government.

Kejriwal believes the CIC should adopt the Bihar model to some extent. "At least, allow filing an appeal on phone. It would mean fewer hassles for applicants,” he said. The present process of filing an RTI appeal is very cumbersome and an applicant cannot file an appeal without a lawyer’s help, he added.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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