Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Gujarat RTI activists meet, voice angst against SICs

DNA; Kinjal Desai; Monday, November 22, 2010,
In a bid to provide a platform to RTI activists to air their grievances, a public hearing was organised at the Mehandi Nawab Jang Hall in Paldi on Sunday. A decision was also taken regarding providing monetary assistance to deceased Amit Jethava's family.
RTI activist Bharatsinh Zala said, "Activists from Gujarat, Mumbai and Delhi arrived at a consensus that the Gujarat government should provide Rs10 lakh as monetary assistance to Jethava's family. We also want the government to realise that the state information commissioner's (SICs) negligence in providing timely information to RTI applicants has resulted in a loss of nearly Rs2 crore to the state."
The RTI award committee of Gujarat organised the public hearing where they discussed the role of information commissioners and also expressed their anguish over the absence of SICs at public hearings.
However, Zala said, "Mallika Sarabhai, a jury member of the RTI award committee, got agitated members to cool down." He added that she promised to meet the SICs in a couple of days time, and based on this, one more public hearing with the SICs will be arranged. Even after that, if the SICs turn a deaf ear to their pleas, they will carry out a demonstration.
Vinod Pandya, another RTI activist, said, "Gujarat information commissioners are pass only 100 orders in a month, whereas the Central information commissioner in New Delhi passes 1,000 orders per month." He added, "At this rate, things are never going to improve. For the January-August 2010 period, 7,100 appeals and complaints are pending. Three information commissioners, in eight months, have passed only 2,386 orders."
The committee received around 450 forms claiming that Gujarat information commissioners neglected their pleas and RTI applications. The SICs are either unable to take action or are deliberately ignoring the guilty, as a result of which, RTI activists are being forced to run from pillar to post. Through this public meeting, activists wanted higher government authorities to take action against the defaulters (i.e. SICs).
Activists complained that today, SICs are running a business under the name of the RTI Act. RTI cases have turned into labour court cases. Over 1,500 cases are pending with no hearing having been conducted. Activists have requested the government to frame a law under CrPC to take action against SICs who neglect cases and hearings and don't provide information to activists and the common people.
Citing an example, activists said that if an information commissioner in New Delhi does not provide information, the Central information commissioner issues a warrant against him to provide data within 10 days. "Why can't such steps be followed in Gujarat?" asked RTI activists in unison.