Anuja, anuja; livemint; Tue, Sep 28 2010;
Residents of Karnataka will soon be able to ask for government-related information under the right to information (RTI) Act via telephone.
The state government has invited bids by 10 October to set up call centres to operate the service, M.N. Vidyashankar, principal secretary, e-governance department, Karnataka, said by email, making Karnataka only the second state to do so after Bihar. The call centres would also register complaints to be dealt with by the public grievance ma-nagement system, he added.
Currently, an RTI applicant needs to place a request with a public authority in writing, and then deliver it personally, electronically or by post.
“RTI applications can be filed in three different ways now—telephonically through the RTI call centre, through the RTI (Internet) portal and through the mediated common service centres across the state,” said D.S. Ravindran, chief executive of e-governance in the state.
Common service centres are being set up under a national plan to take e-governance to rural areas. There are 5,700 such centres in Karnataka.
users can also file complaints through Once the call centres are set up, RTI them if they are not provided information in time, said Ravindran. “One can appeal to the next senior officer and the information officer through the same available channels.” The move comes close to the RTI Act’s fifth anniversary on 12 October.
But RTI activists as well as chief information commissioner Wajahat Habibullah said it will only have a limited impact. “It is not just about Bangalore... In villages... do you have electricity all day?,” said Vikram Simha, trustee at RTI Study Centre, Bangalore. Habibullah said in Bihar, too, the system had worked in Patna but not in far-flung areas. “Telephonic RTI filing in itself works for routine kind of thing, and is not really meant for bulky information,” he added.
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