Economic Times: New Delhi: Wednesday,
April 19, 2017.
Is a
government department or ministry repeatedly denying information under the
Right to Information (RTI) Act? If so, the Central Information Commission (CIC)
would soon be on the case.
In a bid to
address wrongful denial of information to people and to check piling up of
complaints before it, the transparency watchdog plans to directly approach
individual public information officers and ministries that have a rather
chequered record in RTI compliance.
“We are
developing a system under which our database would sort out cases by the name
of central public information officer,” chief information commissioner RK
Mathur said.
“We would
directly tell them this is the particular problem being faced by so many RTI
applicants and we could offer a solution.”
For this, CIC
would constitute a special unit in its registry, which is the first point of
contact for an applicant to register a complaint or appeal under RTI Act. This
unit would sort out cases ministry-wise and central public information officer
(CPIO)-wise with the help of software, and track them based on the name of
CPIO.
The unit
would get an alert if there were an unusual number of cases coming to the
commission from a single ministry or a particular officer. It would then compile
a report, closely analysing the nature of cases and information sought that are
repeatedly ending up at the commission. This report would then be shared with
the CPIO who would be asked to rectify it, officials said.
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