Govt readies leash for RTI

DoPT rules await notification, will water down the landmark law

danish

Danish Raza | December 11, 2010




The going might get difficult for RTI applicants. The government has started the process of notifying the RTI rules. As per the new rules, each RTI application can have questions related to only one subject matter and the word limit is 250 words. This is excluding the address of the central public information officer and the address of the applicant.

Further, the applicant will be required to pay the actual amount spent by public authority on hiring a machine or any other equipment, if any, to supply information.

“There is no logic behind this word limit. It will become a problem for semi-literate people to draft an application in 250 words. It is like telling me that I can speak to you in these many words before I actually start speaking. This is something fudamentally erroneous,” said Venkatesh Nayak, programme coordinator, access to information Programme, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. 

"As an alternative, there should be no word limit to the original RTI application. The public information officer can go through the application and in case he or she finds it very lengthy, can ask the applicant to prioritise the questions," he added.

Nikhil Dey of national campaign for people's right to information said, "This is against the very spirit of the act. The public authorities will surely misuse the word limit rule to reject the applications. This will act as a big deterrent."

Bibhav Kumar of the NGO Kabir said that the word limit rule went beyond the original RTI act which did not mention any word limit on RTI applications.

About postal charges, the rule says “in excess of rupees ten, if any, involved in supply of information, will be gven by the applicant.”

The rules are contained in the office memorandum circulated by the department of personnel and training (DoPT) on Friday (see file attached below).

The rules will override the RTI (regulation of fee and cost) rules, 2005 and the central information commission (appeal procedure) rules, 2005.

Also, appeals to the first appellate authority and the CIC will be made as per a given format.

You can comment on the proposed rules by sending an email at [email protected] by December 27, 2010.

"It is a good thing that they have invited suggestions from civil society in accordance with Section4(1)(c) of the RTI Act. But the notification gets limited to only those who are Internet friendly and the two week's time for people to send comments, is, too short," said commodore L K Batra, RTI activist.
 

Comments

 

Other News

Making AI work where governance is closest to people

India’s next governance leap may not solely come from digitisation. It will come from making public systems more intelligent, more adaptive, and more responsive to the dynamics at the grassroots. That opportunity is especially significant at the panchayat level, where governance is not an abstract po

Borrowing troubles: How small loans are quietly trapping youth

A silent crisis is playing out in the pocket of young India, not in stock markets or government treasuries, but in smartphones of college students and first-jobbers who clicked on the Apply Now button without reading the small print.  A decade ago, to take a loan, you had to do some paperwor

A 19th-century pilgrim’s progress

The Travels of a Sadhu in the Himalayas By Jaladhar Sen (Translated by Somdatta Mandal) Speaking Tiger Books, 259 pages, ₹499.00  

India faces critical shortage of skin donors amid rising burn cases

India reports nearly 70 lakh burn injury cases every year, resulting in approximately 1.4 lakh deaths annually. Experts estimate that up to 50% of these lives could be saved with adequate access to skin donations.   A significant concern is that around 70% of burn victims fall wi

Not just politics, let`s discuss policies too

Why public policy matters Most days, India`s loudest debates stop at the ballot box. We can name every major leader and recall every campaign slogan. Still, far fewer of us can explain why a widow`s pension is delayed or how a government school`s budget is actually approved. That

When algorithms decide and children die

The images have not left me, of dead and wounded children being carried in the arms of the medics and relatives to the ambulances and hospitals. On February 28, at the start of Operation Epic Fury, cruise missiles struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh school – officially named a girls’ school, in Minab,


Archives

Current Issue

Opinion

Facebook Twitter Google Plus Linkedin Subscribe Newsletter

Twitter