Friday, November 27, 2015

An adalat to clear RTI backlog

The Hindu: Bengaluru: Friday, November 27, 2015.
What was supposed to be a powerful tool to give information to the public about government departments has become another bureaucratic headache for citizens.
Ten years after the RTI Act was introduced, the State is staring at a backlog of close to 30,000 cases. The Karnataka Information Commission is considering first-of-its-kind RTI adalats to clear the backlog. The 30,000 cases are just the ones that came before the commission after having been through the two-step appeal process where they were heard by the information officer and an appellate authority.
If the larger picture is considered, there are a lot more cases in limbo across several government departments, experts say. “Generally, it takes anywhere between 8 and 9 months for an RTI request to reach the commission. We want to clear all urgent BBMP related RTI requests in next month’s adalat,” said State Information Commissioner (RTI) L. Krishnamurthy.