By Hemant Singh; iGovernment; Chandigarh: Tuesday 02 November 2010
All district courts in Punjab would have continued to function without a web portal, had an Amritsar resident not sought information under the Right to Information Act.
The website is under construction and once it is ready, litigants can know the status of their cases and any important announcements in relation to that.
This all happened after one Parbodh Chander Bali sought the website address and official email address of the Amritsar District and Sessions Judge and that of courts under his jurisdiction.
However, the complainant’s plea was turned down on the pretext that it amounted to invasion of privacy. The Public Information Officer of the Judge asked him the purpose for which he had sought information. As a result, nothing was disclosed to the complainant.
When the matter came to Chief Information Commission’s notice, it directed the court to comply with Section 4 of the Act and disclose the information sought by Bali.
In its direction, the commission said it was the legal obligation of the District and Sessions Judge to create a website and post all the relevant information on it.
As a result, the complainant received a letter from the public information officer of the Amirtsar District and Sessions Judge, saying the web address of the Punjab division had been received from the Punjab and Haryana High Court and he could access all the information sought by him through it.
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