Indian Express:
Ahmedabad: Wednesday, April 03, 2013.
The revenue
department led by minister Anandiben Patel has fared the worst among all the
state departments in terms of giving satisfactory replies to RTI queries in the
past year, the Gujarat Information Commission (GIC) has said.
In its annual
report for 2011-2012 released Tuesday, the GIC said it received 1,001 appeals
and complaints by applicants who were unhappy with replies they received from
the Revenue Department in 2011-12, making up a fifth of all appeals and
complaints.
The GIC has
also reprimanded 15 government departments, 25 district collectorates and 10
district superintendents of police for failing to compile reports on how they
implemented the provisions of the RTI Act within their own departments and
authorities under their jurisdiction.
Surendranagar
was the only district collectorate to do so, the commission said, adding that
none of the municipal corporations and less than a third of the 159
municipalities across the state had performed the mandatory task.
The GIC also
criticised public authorities for not following pro-active disclosure
requirements under the RTI Act and for appointing lower-level employees as
public information officers (PIOs) who do not have required knowledge or
experience to provide proper responses.
The GIC said
only Class 1 and Class 2 officers should be appointed as first appellate
authority and PIOs respectively.
Number of
RTI pleas jumps by 10% ;
A total
54,570 RTI applications were filed with various government departments and
public authorities in 2011-12, the GIC annual report for that year says, adding
that this is a 10 per cent jump from the previous year.
In all, 2.56
per cent of these were rejected under various sections of the RTI Act.
Individual departments rejected a much higher percentage of applications they
received. These include Revenue (which rejected 17 per cent), Agriculture and
Cooperation (11 per cent), Finance (5 per cent), General Administration (4 per
cent) and Industries and Mines (4 per cent).
Meanwhile,
the GIC received 5,224 applications (including 3,803 appeals and 1,421
complaints) and disposed of or passed orders in just over half of these. The
number of applications to the GIC also saw a 10 per cent increase over the
previous year.
The
commission also said it imposed a fine totalling Rs 2.44 lakh on 25 government
officers. This includes six who were fined Rs 25,000 each, the maximum amount.
The Urban
Development and Urban Housing department and public authorities under it
received the highest number of RTI applications at 15,629, or 30 percent of the
total. The Home Department came second, with 6,985 applications or 13 per cent
of the total, followed by Energy and Petrochemicals with 5,609 or 10 per cent
of the total.
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