The
Times of India: Lucknow: Tuesday, October 23, 2012.
In order to
address the issues plaguing RTI implementation in ministries and government
departments, the department of personnel and training (DoPT) is planning to
rope in law undergraduates. The department has issued guidelines on internship
for undergraduates pursuing five year integrated course in Law under the
centrally sponsored scheme on "improving transparency and accountability
in government through effective implementation of Right to Information (RTI)
Act" for the year 2012-13.
An Internship
Programme has been a felt need for the Ministries and Departments in the
Government of India, which is beneficial both to the Departments and the
interns. This will help the Ministry/ Department consolidate and document its
experience in the implementation of RTI, its successes, constraints in
implementation, identify the areas which need more attention, address the gap
areas and suggest what more needs to be done to help achieve the objectives of
the Act. The interns would be familiarized with the process of seeking
information and enabling access to information under the RTI regime.
Since law
undergraduates can understand the RTI Act better than other students, given
their legal background, DoPT has designed a month-long internship for them. The
students are first told about the sections and clause of the Act, and then
given the RTI applications and appeals from the ministries and government
departments for analysis.
Each intern
is given 100 RTI applications and appeals to study. At the end of the programme,
interns have to submit a report comprising suggestions to improve the
implementation of the Act and shortcomings in the implementation that they come
across.
It is for the
second time that DoPT has prepared the internship programme for undergraduates pursuing
five-year integrated course in law to conduct an analysis of RTI applications
in public authorities in central government.
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