RTI forces AMC’s medical education trust to disclose all.

Times of India: Ahmedabad: Thursday, April 2, 2015.

After resisting from giving details of its function and budget the AMC Medical Education Trust finally bowed before Right to Information Act (RTI). The state information commission had ordered AMC-MET a few weeks ago to upload all information regarding its functions, budget and employee status on its website- amcdental.org. 

The trust established a dental college in 2009 for various academic courses in medicine. These disclosures are mandatory as AMC-MET is a public-funded trust. Despite this, the trust had managed to remain largely underground for many years, till RTI queries started probing into its activities. The information commission while acting on a complaint filed by Pankaj Bhatt, an RTI applicant, had sought reasons for non-disclosure of details under section 4(1)b of the RTI Act. 

Under this clause a public funded body has to reveal powers and duties of its officers, procedures followed in decision-making process, details of rules and regulations and manuals and discharge of duties by the board councils or committees.

Following the RTI query the state information commission directed the state government's General Administration Department and the Urban Development Department to look into the matter. GAD wrote to the trust in October 2014 and in February this year UDD sought clarification on the matter from the trust. Finally on Wednesday the matter was resolved when the trust uploaded all relevant details on its website, as per directives of the information commission.