Mid-Day: Mumbai: Saturday, April
01, 2017.
In a landmark
RTI order, chief information commissioner of Maharashtra, Ratnakar Gaikwad, has
instructed that information of all welfare schemes implemented by various
government departments be uploaded on their respective websites by April 30
next month.
The details
will need to include the salient features of the welfare scheme, the
eligibility criteria, the date/status of receipt of applications and approval
and rejections if any, along with reasons for doing so. The idea is to ensure
complete transparency.
The order
comes just two days after RTI activist and former information commissioner,
Central Information Commission, Shailesh Gandhi, filed a complaint under the
RTI Act, highlighting zero awareness about welfare schemes floated by various
government and municipal bodies.
"The
whole exercise of floating schemes is futile if beneficiaries are unaware about
the same or have to run from pillar to post to get updates from officials in
the concerned departments,” said Gandhi. He added that the concept to file the
complaint struck him while interacting with one of the social enterprises that
offers citizens easy access to various welfare schemes.
When
contacted, Gaikwad said that he had not only accepted all the suggestions put
forward by Gandhi, but had gone a step further and applied Section 4 of RTI
Act, where not only suo moto information has to be provided by the public
authorities, but also decisions taken with regard to that.
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