Indian
Express: Mumbai: Tuesday, 26 August 2014.
Despite a
blanket rule for all educational institutions to provide information under the
Right to Information (RTI) Act on their websites, several departments of Mumbai
University (MU) have failed to update information regularly since the initiative
was made mandatory in 2005.
While a few
departments have updated information about their faculty and other staff
members, very few of the departments of the varsity have bothered to upload the
annual reports that refer to the enrollments, results, number of graduating
students and pass percentages.
A group of
senate members and management council members have taken up the issue with the
Vice Chancellor. University officials have said the matter will be looked into
and department heads would be held responsible for not fulfilling the mandatory
requirement.
According to
a member of the management council of the MU, most departments in the
university were functioning in a arbitrary manner without any accountability to
the masses. “The initiative of providing voluntary information was aimed at
ensuring that persons visiting the university website could have easy access to
information regarding its activities. However, apart from filling up details of
academic and non-academic staff, the departments have not bothered to update
information about programs and seminars conducted by them, ongoing and
completed research, photo galleries, alumni information and other such headings
that are mentioned on their respective department pages,” said the member.
Soon after
the RTI Act was formulated in 2005, all government organisations and
institutions were supposed to provide their information on their respective
websites under the Act. According to officials, the Mumbai University had also
asked its departments to implement the rule. Though the departments filled up
information in the format provided by the University, they did not bother to
update it regularly.
With the
exception of a few departments, none of the other departments have updated the
information. In fact, some departments have information dating back to 2008. In
the case of departments that have uploaded information of later years, the
pages are not accessible.
MU senate
member Sudhakar Tamboli said, “We have been following up with the university
for almost one-and-a-half years on this issue. However, we have seen no action
taking place in this matter. Every time we meet the authorities, they assure us
of looking into the matter. All departments are expected to not only provide
information of their departments, but also update them from time to time.”
However, for
almost every department, the ‘annual report’ page on the website is
under-construction. The departments that have failed to provide mandatory
information include arts, science, commerce, law, technology and sports. The exceptions
are from some streams in these departments.
MU registrar
Dr M A Khan said it was a grave lapse on the part of the departments.
“We will
review status of mandatory disclosure of each department through the public
information officer and will ask departments to update the sections at the
earliest.”
Khan added
that such a lapse could not be accepted and an explanation would be sought from
the respective department heads.
.JPG)
.JPG)
