RTI queries suffer as babus get shunted

The Times of India: Noida: Thursday, June 28, 2012.

The Noida Authority has a huge backlog of Right To Information applications due to the absence of a full time public information officer (PIO) as a result of frequent transfers of officials.

The number of appeals pending under the RTI Act between March and May this year alone is around 200. However, in order to clear this backlog soon, the Authority has appointed two senior officials as the appellate authorities and has also dedicated two days in a week to deal with the pending applications.

While the Authority's current officer on special duty, Manoj Rai, has been appointed as the new PIO, deputy CEOs, Vijay Yadav and K S Chauhan, have been named appellate officers to deal with all RTI applications. The Authority plans to clear all pending appeals within two months.

Earlier, the Authority had earmarked each Friday to deal with pending RTI applications, however, it will now dedicate two days in a week to deal with old applications. "Under the RTI Act, a first appeal has to be heard by the appellate authority within 30 days. This time can extend up to 45 days if supported by a proper reason. But, due to the model code of conduct implemented for the assembly elections and the transfers that followed, a lot of applications got accumulated. C B Singh and Anil Raj Kumar, looking after the RTI applications, were transferred soon after the polls concluded and we could not appoint new officials," a senior Noida Authority official said.

"However, the pending appeals are one of the major concerns now and we want to ensure that all the old applications are dealt with in two months. Once that is done, we will ensure that all the new applications are processed as soon as possible," added the official.

While the Authority failed to provide exact figures, as per its own estimates, it receives around 50-70 RTI applications every month. Most of these applications deal with plots/land allotments, registry of plots and flats, information on civic work taken up by the Authority and some relate to frauds by developers/builders on the Authority's land or plots.