Greater Kashmir: Srinagar: Saturday,
April 08, 2017.
While
assisting people in filing applications under Right to Information Act (RTI) in
rural areas , we have observed that people usually seek information about
beneficiary list of rural housing scheme Indira Awas Yojna (IAY) which has now
been renamed as Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna (PMAY) by Modi lead BJP Government. People across India
and in particular J&K state have been complaining about mass irregularities
in identification of IAY or PMAY
beneficiaries. In-fact we exposed such irregularities several times in past
wherein well to do families having better housing facilities where benefitted
under IAY scheme. In 2011 a village head (Sarpanch) had swindled the entire
money meant for 27 homeless people of his village in Budgam district and the
money @ Rs 58,500 per household was
distributed among his own kiths and kins. But the power of RTI made him to
repay part of the amount into Govt chest , but till date no legal proceedings
were initiated against him in-spite of the fact that matter came into notice of
State Vigilance Organisation also. Similarly people invoke RTI to seek
information about old age pension , minor developmental works as well. Unless some well educated
people or activists follow these cases ,
the information is either withheld by the respective Government departments or they provide misleading
information to these aggrieved people.
Why to
file an RTI application ?
Why shall a
poor villager have to file an application under RTI Act to get information about the beneficiary list of
rural housing scheme (IAY, PMAY) of his village ? Why shall a poor and homeless
person living in some town of J&K
have to seek information from a local Municipal Committee about the
families who were provided financial assistance of Rs 1.50 lakh per
household under Integrated Housing &
Slum Development Programme (IHSDP) to construct a one room house ? Why shall a physically challenged person
have to file RTI application to get the details of his monthly stipend ? All
this information should be pro actively
available on the official websites of District Administration and respective
Directorates of the departments who control these organizations.
Section 4 (1)
(b) of J&K RTI Act 2009 as well as Central RTI Act 2005 lays special
emphasis on proactive disclosure . The RTI law says that within 120 days of
enactment of RTI Act , the information should be proactively made available on
websites , notice boards , newspapers , booklets etc. Jammu & Kashmir RTI Act was enacted on March 20th 2009 and
the Government should have made proactive
disclosures by the end of July 2009, but
even till date the 80 -85 % of the Government controlled
organizations haven’t adhered to this
legal guideline which is a clear violation of J&K RTI Act 2009. Once the
list of IAY or PMAY is prepared same should be available on website of the
concerned Deputy Commissioner of the district. Information about the works
executed under NREGA or beneficiaries of timber provided by State Forest
Corporation (SFC) should be also be available on the official District
websites.
June 30th
deadline by CIC :
Recently
J&K’s Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) Khurshid Ahmad Ganai in order to enforce the provision of proactive disclosure of
information under J&K RTI Act 2009
issued a notice directing all the Public Authorities to take necessary steps to make voluntary
disclosure of information through various means especially through their
respective official websites by or before June 30th. The State Information Commission (SIC) vide its official notification No : SIC
/J/15/2009 -11 /148-80 Dated 17.3.2017
directed the public authorities
to make proactive disclosure of
information under section 4 of State RTI Act
by of before June 30th or face action.
The
notification reads as :
“Whereas, it has come to the notice of State
Information Commission that large number of Public Authorities in the state
have not made suo moto disclosure of information in terms of section 4 and have also not taken various steps mentioned
therein for the same purpose. Now therefore in exercise of powers conferred
under section 22 (5) of J&K RTI Act 2009 , the State Information Commission
makes the recommendation to all such Public Authorities in state to take
necessary steps so as to conform to all the provisions of section 4. The State
Information Commission also recommends that action / actions may be taken and
completed by or before 30th of June 2017 to achieve such conformity “
Conclusion
:
The CIC’s
direction to enforce the provision of voluntary disclosure of information under
section 4 (1) (b) of J&K RTI Act 2009 by June 30th 2017 is indeed a welcome
step. CIC’s during his speech at an RTI workshop recently reiterated his commitment on enforcing
voluntary disclosure of information. We
hope that by June end majority of the Government offices in Jammu & Kashmir
will digitize their official record and the same would be uploaded on the
official websites. This order is not at
all meant to harass Government functionaries but in-fact this will make
Government more transparent , accountable and above all filing of RTI
applications would get minimized.
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