GreaterKashmir.com: Srinagar: Saturday, January 25, 2014.
Whenever
Chief Minister Omar Abdullah addresses any public gathering, conference,
seminar or any other similar function, he highlights the achievements of his
Government by talking about enactment of
progressive legislations like
Right to Information Act (RTI) and
Public Services Guarantee Act (PSGA). Both the legislations are indeed
very progressive but as for as its implementation by the Government is seen the situation is very much
discouraging. I am not commenting on PSGA
right now but having worked on RTI for the last almost a decade , I
would like to elaborate about the
implementation of one of the important provisions of J&K RTI Act 2009
contained under section 4 (1) (b) wherein public authorities have to make pro
active, voluntary or suo motto disclosures. It
is now almost five years since the existing version of RTI Act
was passed by the state legislature but if we analyze its practical
implementation , the tall claims of the coalition Government in Jammu &
Kashmir get exposed because Government itself has failed to adhere to the guidelines of the RTI
law.
Pro active disclosure under RTI Act?
J&K RTI
Act 2009 was enacted on March 20th 2009 but even after elapse of more than four years the Government
departments have miserably failed to adhere to the guidelines of this historic
law. One of the essential guidelines was to make voluntary disclosure by the
public authorities contained in the section 4 (1) (b) of J&K RTI Act 2009.
Under section 4 (1) (b) all the Public Authorities which includes Government
departments , semi Government departments , corporations , boards
,councils etc have to make proactive
disclosure of all official orders , circulars , notices etc so that such information is readily available
in the public domain through the
official Government websites , notice boards ,sign boards etc and people need not to seek such
information under RTI Act. As per J&K RTI Act 2009 the proactive disclosure
was to be made within four months (120 days) of the enactment of the State RTI
Act. The J&K RTI Act was enacted on
March 20th 2009 and the Government should have made the voluntary / suo motto
disclosures by the end of July 2009 but even till date the 80 % of the Government departments , boards ,
corporations , semi Government department’s etc haven’t done so which is a
clear violation of J&K RTI Act 2009.
SIC’s
intervention on pro active disclosure:
The J&K
State Information Commission (SIC) an apex body to ensure implementation of
Right to Information in the state has also tried its level best to grill the
Government for the blatant violation of
RTI law in state viz a viz implementation of section 4 (1) (b) (voluntary
disclosure). From the last one year the SIC especially the Chief Information
Commissioner (CIC) G R Sufi issued scores of orders against many public authorities
like directing them to upload all the
information about official policies , orders , circulars , seniority lists ,
beneficiaries of various Government schemes etc on their official websites under an intimation
to SIC but this hasn’t been done. The question arises that whether all these
Government departments have official
websites or not? and the answer is no. Even if some departments have their
official websites such websites are not
being updated on regular basis and all the obsolete information about RTI Act
is available on such websites. Except a few public authorities like
Police , Vigilance , Health, GAD etc most of the departmental websites
are not being updated regularly in-spite of the fact that crores of rupees from tax payers money is being been spent for creation and maintenance
of these official websites.
Conclusion:
Enactment of
laws makes no sense unless people are really benefitted by such legislations.
Mere enactment of RTI Act some years back cannot be called an achievement of
the present coalition Government especially at a time when even the designated
Public Information Officers (PIOs) and 1st Appellate Authorities under RTI Act
don’t know their nature of job because
they were not given any training until recently. Senior Government officials are lambasted on
daily basis by State Information Commission (SIC) and this can be verified from
the orders of SIC uploaded on its website from the last 2 years.
If proactive
disclosures are made by the Government departments it will lessen the burden of
RTI applications in the Government offices and make the departments more
accountable & transparent. Why shall an Aam Aadmi have to file an RTI
application to seek BPL ration card or
Indira Awaas Yojna (IAY) beneficiary list from the office of Deputy
Commissioner , BDO or any another Government office? Why shall
aspirants of Government jobs seek details of his / her a merit list from
Public Service Commission or SSRB or any other office? This kind of information
must be proactively available under section 4 (1) (b) of State RTI Act. The
Government has to ensure that all the public authorities make proactive
disclosures by enforcing implementation of section 4 (1) (b) of J&K RTI Act
2009 in letter and spirit.
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