CIC ties up with HIPA for launching awareness campaign of RTI

Business Standard: Shimla: Tuesday, May 21, 2013.

In a bid to encourage people in rural areas to seek information about development funds and prevent its misuse, the Chief Information Commissioner will launch an awareness campaign on Right to Information Act.

Chief Information Commissioner Bhim Sen said that so far more than 80 per cent of applications field under RTI are related to individual issues and effort are on to change this trend and make the use of RTI more public oriented.

"The idea is to motivate the rural people to file RTIs to seek information about the allocation and expenditure of funds for development, developmental schemes for their areas and their implementation and use/misuse/abuse of public funds," he said.

Every government department or public sector organisation would also have a nodal agency to ensure time bound delivery of information for "corruption free" governance, the CIC said.

The CIC has tied-up with Himachal Institute of Public administration (HIPA) for organising the campaign and some workshops have already been organised in main cities and interior areas of Shimla, Sirmaur and Kangra districts.

HIPA uses traditional modes of communications including folk songs, theatre, streets plays in local dialectics for popularising RTI, he said.

Sen said that instances of threat and social boycott of RTI activists have come to light and the Commission has taken action against the officials denying information or using extra-official means to browbeat the citizens for seeking information.

The CIC informed that nearly Rs 5.61 lakh have been recovered as penalty imposed on the Public Information Officer (PIOs) for denying or delaying the information to citizens.

The CIC has also developed a software named as SIC using information technology as a medium to track cases of denial of information and ensure that citizens get easy access to public information.