The
Times of India: Hyderabad: Tuesday, October 30, 2012.
Taking
serious objection to the queries being raised by the public information
officers (PIOs) when information is sought under the Right to Information (
RTI) Act, state information commissioner M Ratan has said that the PIOs have no
business to ask questions. He said that providing information sought by the
applicant was the job of the PIOs and putting questions to the applicant was
not tolerable.
Ratan took
strong objection to the pending applications in revenue department. Speaking at
a meeting here on Monday, Ratan said, "Asking details of the applicant and
purpose of the information goes against the spirit of the Act. The Act was
designed to bring transparency in the governance and the PIOs should perform
their duty as per its provisions," Ratan observed.
He said of
the 15,000 applications pending with the state commission, more than 5,000
pertained to the revenue department alone. He said that nearly 1.7 lakh PIOs
were appointed to furnish the information sought. He suggested that PIOs not to
reject any application on flimsy grounds. The commission was taking steps to
dispose the cases early in order to empower people with the information. He
said that entire data sought and given by respective PIOs should be compiled in
the computers as per section 4(1-b) of the act. He said although the act itself
prescribed that 17 issues should be computerised, no one was following the
rule.
Ratan said
that it was unfortunate that many officers are not even aware of the details
that need to be compiled in a tabular form of a table even seven years after
the act came into vogue. He asked that all the welfare departments should
upload their spending almost regularly and on a daily basis so that the stake
holders would come to know about the expenditure. Joint collector N Yuvaraj and
district revenue officer K Nagababu were present at the meeting.