Economic Times: New Delhi: Tuesday, January 23, 2018.
The Right to
Information Act, conceived as a tool for the common man to make the government
more accountable towards administration and governance, has in the past few years
seen an "unfortunate shift".
The number of
people filing RTI applications asking about how government schemes are being
implemented has shrunk, and it has largely become a weapon to dig out private
details of people to settle personal scores, information commissioner Bimal
Julka told state commissioners at a meeting on Saturday.
Julka urged
them to help make RTI an effective tool to empower the common man and train
officials in giving clear and concise replies.
"It is
unfortunate that most of the RTI applications are directed at private
interests, matrimonial disputes, knowing salaries and leave records of rivals
and settling personal scores. That was not the intent of RTI," a state
information officer who attended the meeting quoted Julka as saying.
Grievance
redress was never the part of RTI the way it is now, but is increasingly
becoming the reason for most people to file RTIs, he said at the meeting, which
was presided over by chief information commissioner RK Mathur.
"The IC
(information commissioner) told us that RTI is increasingly becoming about addressing
one's own problems getting a refund of tax, or settling personal scores ...
Nobody is asking about GST or Make in India. People don't even file first
appeal. They directly go for complaints. Is their trust in the first appellate
authorities going down," the state official said.
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