Indian Express: Noida: Saturday,
October 22, 2016.
It took seven
years for a Noida- based RTI activist to get the Hindi version of the RTI Act
corrected.
Ironically,
he had to use the Right to Information (RTI) Act to push officials of the PMO,
DoPT and the Law Ministry to get the desired result.
Activist
Commodore Lokesh Batra (Retired) used the act to get 34 mistakes in the Hindi
version corrected.
In 2009,
Commodore Batra sent numerous e-mails to the Central Information Commissioner
(CIC) and the prime minister’s office and a plethora of RTIs to alert the
government about the 34 mistakes in the Hindi version of RTI Act, 2005.
Commodore
Batra said that in the Hindi version, Section 2(h) (d) and (i) had grave
translation errors.
The section
conveyed
(i)Body
owned, controlled or substantially financed by the Central Government.
He pointed
out that the aforementioned clause is only applicable to central government
which is not the case. He said this serious mistake needed immediate
correction.
In a separate
letter addressed to the prime minister, Commodore Batra said, “This is a
serious mistake and needs immediate correction. Hindi speaking states can make
full use of this mistake to their advantage. Sir, I request
someone in the government to immediately go thru the translated Hindi version of the RTI Act
2005 to ensure that there are no
more mistakes. In the meantime government needs to issue notification to
correct this mistake.”
Afterwards,
he filed another RTI to seek status on his email to which he did not receive a
reply.
When the
First Appellate Authority and the office of PMO’s response did not give
satisfactory answers, Commodore Batra approached the CIC.
During the
hearing, it was said that a virus in PMO’s computer system was the reason for
not receiving the e-mail of 10th April 2008.
When the
mistake still persisted, Commodore Batra filed an RTI to seek an inspection of
the files.
He received
intimation that the DoPT had taken up the matter with the Official Languages
Wing of the Ministry of Law and Justice.
Consequently, the Legislative Department of the Ministry
of Law
and Justice issued a notification on 22 June, 2009, regarding the
34 mistakes/corrections in the Hindi
version of the Act.
Thereafter,
it took several reminders and a further period of 10 months for the DoPT to
upload the corrected version of the Hindi RTI Act on its website.