HYDERABAD:
The experience of most citizens who have tried to exercise their right under the Right to Information Act has been "disappointing". In response to the Times of India's RTI campaign, many readers have written their experiences and how it has left them high and dry.
While the most common complaint is that of inordinate delay in disposal of cases, others narrate their pillar-to-post effort to ensure their appeal has reached the public information officer (PIO) concerned.
"I had made an application in March 2010 seeking information under the RTI Act with regard to my unsettled provident fund dues from the Provident Fund office but there has been no response so far. I had filed this out of sheer curiosity to test the efficiency of the commission and it has miserably failed the test,'' writes TOI reader Ranjeet Mathur.
But the main grouse of most citizens is against the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC). A Srinivas, for instance, had filed an RTI query with GHMC which remained unanswered. Piqued, he moved the state information commission but to his surprise the PIO attached to GHMC falsely claimed before state information commissioner K Sudhakar Rao that his RTI query had been answered. And this triggered a series of visits to the information commission office.
Citizen activists like Manatosh Mandal corroborate the harassment meted out to RTI petitioners at GHMC. "My experience with the public information commissioners has been quite disappointing. The GHMC is known to delay petitions. Not only do they delay the proceedings, there is also no one appointed in the department to inform you about the status of the case. Also, they have invented some restrictive practices like accepting only one appeal from a person per day, which is not a term in the rulebook,'' he says.
"I am still awaiting a response to my RTI appeal filed earlier seeking information from the postal department," said A Viswanatha Rao, a TOI reader who wrote how he had filed an RTI to find out if a document he had mailed had been delivered.
"The worst response has been from GHMC, which keeps directing appellants to different departments, as they do not know the department concerned which will take care of the particular query. Also, the departments refuse to accept the Rs 10 processing fee in cash and insist on a postal order,'' said Kantha Kannan, citizen activist who started the Right to Walk Foundation and has filed RTI queries with various government departments to seek answers on the missing footpaths of the city.
Intriguingly, the department that citizens rate as among the most efficient in responding to RTI queries is the police department.
Some citizens like advocate Srinivas Madhav said that the state information commission is not a powerless body and should ensure all public departments respond to RTI queries.
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