Moneycontrol.com: Madras: Sunday, August 13, 2017.
The Madras
High Court has issued notices to the Centre and the Tamil Nadu government on a
PIL seeking to launch an online RTI portal for getting information from various
departments of the state government.
A Division
Bench comprising Justice M Sathyanarayanan and Justice N Seshasayee issued the
notice to Secretary, Department of Personnel and Training and Director General,
National Informatics Centre, New Delhi, on a petition from A S Mohamed Khader
Meeran, an MBBS student from Tiruchirapalli.
The judges
also issued a notice to the state government, returnable by September 4.
The
petitioner, while referring to the development of online portal by Maharashtra
under the RTI Act, submitted that the centre had, in response to a query, said
that no financial or technical assistance was provided to that state in this
regard.
He further
said that the Centre had submitted that it had requested the National
Informatics Centre (NIC) to provide technical support such as software and
source code to governments which desired to replicate the web portal for online
filing of RTI applications at the state level.
The
petitioner further alleged that the Secretary, Department of Personnel and
Administrative Reforms, Government of Tamil Nadu, had stated that it had
already approached the NIC and was taking steps to develop the software for the
same.
He further
said that an RTI query raised by him revealed that no such request was made by
any of the departments of the Tamil Nadu government.
Stating that
the above development would reduce the burden of Public Information officers,
paper work and also save public money, the petitioner prayed the court to
direct the government to launch an online RTI portal.
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