Making it easy for the Indian diaspora to seek information under the RTI Act, the centre has decided to float electronic Indian Postal Order for paying RTI fee, which can be purchased using debit and credit cards.

The Indians settled abroad were finding it difficult to seek information under the transparency law as IPO or Demand Draft of Rs 10 was not easily available.

The department of personnel has now agreed in principle with the department of posts to launch e-IPO which can be easily purchased by the applicant living abroad using their credit or debit cards.

Under the proposed scheme, once applicant purchases e-IPO using credit or debit card physical postal order will not be generated, only a number would be generated which could be mentioned on the application by the applicant.

"Information seeker will write this number on his RTI application and send to public authority. Service of e-IPO along with RTI application will be applicable to Central Public authorities", a personnel ministry circular said.

The details provided by the applicant will be matched with those on the department of posts web site and once transaction details are matched, fee will be accepted.

"Money will not be received physically by the PIO but will be transferred to a consolidated fund of India. This will be on the patten of the payment received by the department of posts in the scheme of CAPIOs", it said.

The ministry directed all ministries and departments to appoint nodal officers for handling e-RTI applications.

It said the nodal officers will be given training to handling these applications once the modalities are worked out.

Commodore (retd) Lokesh Batra who was pursuing this matter for the last five years said, "We would like to express our gratitude to the government for giving commitment in the parliament regarding 'facilitating filing of RTI applications in central government public authorities by 'Indians living abroad' through sale of Indian Postal Orders through internet on payment in foreign currency".

Batra said he expects all wings of the government of India (department of posts, DoPT, RBI and others) to speedily work together to give "this gift to the nation on or before 15 June 2012, the seventh anniversary of enactment of the RTI Act".