Times of India: Aurangabad: Sunday,
February 26, 2017.
As the Below
Poverty Line (BPL) applicants will no longer be able to seek unlimited
photocopies of desired information under the Right To Information (RTI) Act as
per new rules, activists have demanded rolling back the concerned decision.
"It is a prejudiced decision, which is detrimental to the spirit of the
RTI Act. The government should scrap such diktat," said Nitin Pawar, a
leader of unorganized sector labourers.
In a major
decision, the State General Administration Department (GAD) has asked all
public institutions that BPL candidates should be given only 50 photocopies of
desired information free of cost and thereafter normal charges be recovered on
the line of other applicants. Fee of Rs 2 per page is charged for photocopies
of information sought by other than BPL candidates.
The GAD
circular, in its introductory part, has referred to a slew of recommendations
the State Information Commission (SIC) had made in past and clubbed all those
in annual report of 2016, paving the way for speculations that the move to
charge BPL applicants has been suggested by the SIC.
Sushil
Rathod, another activist, said any circular from the government department
should not negate the legislation framed by the Parliament. "The
government should have equal approach towards looking at different stakeholders
and any biased attitude towards particular community implies towards sick mind
of policy makers ," he said.