Hindustan Times: Bhopal: Sunday, 28 September 2014.
The MP
government might be harping on e-governance, but the general administration
department (GAD) has expressed inability to share email details of the chief
minister, ministers and government officials under right to information (RTI).
During a recent hearing at the State Information Commission (SIC), the public
information officer of the GAD said the details could not be provided as they
were not available in a compiled format. Following the reply, the chief
information commissioner KD Khan reserved the order in the case.
Interestingly
many of these email details are available in the annual diary published by the
state government.
RTI activist
Ajay Dubey had filed an application in February 2012, seeking details of these
email ids, the details of the anonymous complaints received by the chief
secretary’s office and the details of the monthly online diaries (reports)
submitted by the government officials to the government.
After the
information was not given by the GAD, a first appeal was filed with the
appellate authority at the department. However, the information was refused on
the grounds that the department did not have compiled information on e-mails.
The applicant then filed a second appeal with the SIC and the hearing in this
matter was held last week.
During the
hearing, the public information officer (PIO), Rajesh Kaul (deputy secretary of
GAD) verbally filed a reply mentioning unavailability of the compiled email id
details as well as the other information sought in the original application.
When contacted, Kaul confirmed to HT that details were refused under RTI
because of lack of compiled data.
The applicant
Ajay Dubey, however, has pointed out that much of the email details were
available in public domain (in form of government diary) and in era of
e-governance it was inexplicable that e-mail id details were not available with
the GAD. He has decided to submit copies of the government diary pages to the
commission before the final order in the matter is issued. He also pointed out
that the records of anonymous complaints were properly compiled by the Prime
Minister’s office.
Speaking to
HT, Dubey also alleged that the information was probably not being given
officially as many of the officials were using email ids of private foreign web
hosts rather than the ids created by government agencies the National
Informatics Centre (NIC) as apparent by government diary details. Pertinently,
recent reports suggested that use of email providers with foreign servers for
official communication would be banned by the Union government.
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