You could soon track the status of your RTI application on your mobile phone, if the recommendations of a panel of information commissioners are taken up.Chetan Chauhan reports.
You could soon track the status of your Right to Information (RTI) application on your mobile phone, if the recommendations of a panel of information commissioners are taken up.
HT Image
There's more. The sub-committee has also proposed an information commissioner for each district. And that performance responding to RTI applications be included in the annual career reports of bureaucrats.
{{^htLoading}} {{/htLoading}}
The committee has selected the Andhra Pradesh model of quick responses to applications for replication in other states. In Andhra Pradesh, applicants can keep track of their application through SMSes sent to a call centre.
The Punjab model has been suggested to help citizens file applications at the district and the sub-divisional level.
The proposal of an information commissioner in each district is borrowed from Maharashtra.
The committee has asked state governments to provide police protection to those whose applications may expose corruption in the public distribution system, National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and road construction scheme. (or government schemes)
The panel has blamed the bureaucracy for the poor implementation of the RTI Act. And as a remedy, the panel says bureaucrats must be appraised on the basis of their response to RTI appeals.
{{^htLoading}} {{/htLoading}}
{{^usCountry}}
"Inclusion of RTI in annual career reports (ACRs) of public information officers should be mandatory," the committee has said.
{{/usCountry}}
{{#usCountry}}
"Inclusion of RTI in annual career reports (ACRs) of public information officers should be mandatory," the committee has said.
{{/usCountry}}
Training government officials on RTI issues has also been suggested.
It also wants collectors to monitor the disposal of RTI applications submitted at district centres. At the village level, the panel has suggested that panchayats handle the job.
Emphasising that poor maintenance of records is the main reason for hindering the government in successfully implementing the Act, the committee has asked states to computerise all records and provide information regarding it to public information officers.
The list of all public authorities, including NGOs, should be put up on the state information commission website, the committee has said.
The committee has also proposed that the Centre for Good Governance, Hyderabad, serve as the national centre to compile and analyse information related to the implementation of the RTI Act.
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.
