The Tribune: Kapurthala: Friday, June 29, 2018.
Applicants
seeking information under the Right to Information (RTI) Act in various cases
with the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) Punjab RTI
office are a harassed lot due to the delayed release of information.
Meanwhile,
several applicants who had filed RTI a few months ago to get a copy of their
previous Elementary Teacher Training (ETT) examination answer sheets, lamented
that they had to do rounds of the office to get a reply to their application,
the time for which had already been extended beyond the stipulated 30 days.
The Public
Information Officer (PIO) is supposed to send the RTI reply within 30 days, but
due to the negligence on the part of officers, information gets delayed.
An official
of the SCERT, RTI Nodal Officer Maninder Singh, said: “We make sure to reply
the RTI application within 30 days and every plea is dealt as a priority. It
rarely happens when the reply to an application gets delayed, but in such a
case we ensure a check and send the replies at the earliest.”
Amit, who
filed an RTI on April 19 this year, seeking copy of his 2016 answer sheet of
English and Social Studies examinations, said: “It is more than two months now
and I have not received the reply to the RTI. I have filed the RTI as I am
confident enough that I had performed well in the exams but still I have not
got even passing marks. I wanted to figure out my mistakes and see if there is
any problem with the marking.”
He said
people facing charges wanted to prove their innocence through the RTI but the
response gets delayed. Not providing information on time could create problems
for many persons involved in various cases. This is sabotaging the right to
information that pertains to right and liberty of a person.
“I have to
appear for the ETT exam next month and I want the reply before that. If I get
the copy, I can improve or challenge my results in case of any discrepancy in
marking,” he added.
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