Haryana pledges to give out information before RTI pleas

Times of India: Gurgaon: Monday, June 03, 2013.

Haryana government has finally decided to disclose information of general public interest proactively, even before it's requested through RTIs, at regular intervals. The move, a part of Central government guidelines, aims to reduce the number of RTI applications and pendency.

All administrative secretaries in the state have been told to implement suo motu disclosures as prescribed under Section 4 of the Right to Information Act, 2005.

The purpose of suo motu discloser is to "place a large amount of information in public domain on a proactive basis to make the functioning of the public authorities more transparent and reduce the need for filing individual RTI applications".

Keeping in view of the technical nature of the government budgets, it will be essential that ministries or departments prepare simplified versions of their budgets which could be understood by general public and place them in public domain. "We will also provide periodic monitoring reports in a user-friendly manner through graphs and tables to the public," said an official.

This would include information relating to procurements, including notice or tender enquiries, details of bids and contracts etc.

"All public services that are provided through public-private-partnership will also come under the suo motu disclosures," said the official. This will include details of the special purpose vehicle (SPV), detailed project reports, concession agreements, operation and maintenance manuals and other documents generated as part of the implementation of a PPP project. All payments made under the PPP project may also be disclosed regularly along with the purpose of making such payment.

Funds released to various autonomous organizations, statutory organizations, attached offices, public sector enterprises, societies, NGOs or corporations should be put on the website on a quarterly basis and budgets of such authorities may be made accessible through links from the website of the ministry or department.

However, documents under the ambit of the exemption from disclosure of information under of the RTI Act would not be disclosed suo motu.

"Transfer policy for different grades of employees serving in public authority should be proactively disclosed. All transfer orders should be publicized through the website or in any other manner listed," he said.

However, these guidelines would not be applicable in cases of transfers made keeping in view sovereignty, integrity, security, strategic, scientific or economic interests of the state and the exemptions covered under Section 8 of the Act. These instructions would not apply to security and intelligence organizations under the second schedule of the RTI Act.

Public authorities may proactively disclose the CAG and PAC reports and the Action Taken Reports (ATRs) only after these have been tabled in the parliament.