Times
of India: Bhopal: Sunday, 12 July 2015.
General
administration department (GAD), which is key to information dissemination, has
been tight-lipped on RTI awareness in the state. With piling appeals and
complaints against GAD in state commission, TOI correspondent had filed a RTI
query a year ago to learn about ground reality.
A query on
funds spent by GAD on RTI awareness in the state was sent to GAD public
information officer (PIO) on June 28, 2014. More than year later, no reply was
received.
After filing
a second appeal for early hearing in the state commission, a trial date was
finally received by the TOI correspondent on Monday. Both the applicant and a
GAD representative were called for a hearing. But no representative from GAD
turned up during trial, which began at 11 am.
GAD excused
itself on grounds that it was busy with the forthcoming monsoon session Vidhan
Sabha after sitting on the query for more than a year. Also, no application or
copy of the reply stating the reason for absence from trial was provided to the
TOI correspondent.
Chief
Information Commissioner, KD Khan said an application has been sent by GAD,
stating that no representative would be able to attend till the monsoon session
of Assembly concludes. CIC said an ordered will be issued within two days.
This is not
the first time, GAD failed to turn up for trials, RTI activist Ajay Dubey said.
"I have stopped going to my case hearings against GAD because nobody from
the department bothers to show up". Also, till date not a single penalty
has been slapped on any PIO from GAD.
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