Times of
India: Chennai: Saturday, September 22, 2018.
The
RTI Act promises you information from a government department within 30 days.
But if you are filing an RTI with any arm of the Tamil Nadu government, it can
take up to 15 months to get relevant information.
Data
collated by an NGO from websites of the Tamil Nadu Information Commission
(TNIC), appellate authority for RTI-related issues, clearly highlights the
delay. Even applications sent to the TNIC didn’t get responses within the
stipulated one month, said the report based on publicly available information
released by the Chennai-based NGO, Arappor Iyakkam, on Friday. Government
departments had also failed to make data public on their websites as mandated in
Section 4 of the RTI Act, the report said.
The
report, which was released at a press conference by Jayaram Venkatesan,
convenor of the NGO, said on an average every information commissioner heard
fewer than two cases a day, against the nine expected by the Central
Information Commission (CIC).
The
chief commissioner of TNIC, Sheela Priya IAS (retd), did not respond to calls
or text messages.
Why
is the TNIC so important? The commission is tasked with settling disputes
between the Public Information Officer (PIO) of a government agency and an RTI
applicant. It can punish the PIO, levying a fine up to Rs 25,000 or
recommending other disciplinary action. The commission can also recommend steps
to improve transparency.
Activists
allege state government bodies have made it a habit not to respond to RTI
queries. “Only if one files a first appeal or second appeal, do they get scared
and hence reply. The commission also sides with government agencies as retired
bureaucrats are appointed as commissioners,” said M Thuyamurthy, a veteran RTI
activist.
TNIC
sources say they have only three court halls and hence can’t hear more cases.
But Jayaram Venkatesan points out that it cannot be for lack of space as the
commission gets Rs1.1 crore a year as rent for its building in Teynampet.
Arappor’s
report also said that in 2017 the commission disposed of 771 cases without
conducting hearings. Moreover, it added, judgment copies were not uploaded
promptly -- for instance, judgments of January 2018 were uploaded in June.
Though
second appeals could be filed online, the TNIC did not have an online tracker
facility like in Karnataka and Maharashtra, Arappor said.
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