The department of personnel and training (DoPT) has once again proved that the government’s policy to consult citizens on drafting laws is a sham.

The department has no mechanism to maintain the comments it received from citizens on the draft right to information (RTI) rules.

“Due to administrative reasons the communication under reference was not diarised and it was placed in folder,” was the department’s reply to commodore (rtd) L K Batra who wanted to know if DoPT considered his feedback on the said rules.

Batra had emailed his feedback.
 
“By not maintaining records of communication received, DoPT is not only flouting the office procedure of record maintenance but also violating section 4(1) (a) of the RTI Act. This section says that the public authority should maintain all its records duly catalogued and indexed,” said he.

The applicant had also sought the procedure devised by the government to  process the comments received in response to the DoPT’s official memorandum of 10 Dec last.
 
“No specific procedure/policy has been laid down for processing the comments to the said OM,” said the RTI reply. 

On December 10 last, DoPT had put the drat RTI rules onm its website. It had invited public feedback on the same.

The government has rejected the feedback of the national advisory council (NAC) on the mentioned rules.