The Telegraph: Namita Panda :Bhubaneshwar : Monday, Septembr 21, 2015.
The state government admitted that it had failed to place the Odisha Information Commission's annual report in the Assembly for the past two years due to the indifference of its various departments.
The annual reports of 2012-13 and 2014-15 have not been tabled in the Assembly, because the departments have not yet furnished the requisite information, said official sources.
It is mandatory on part of the state government to place the annual reports of the statutory bodies, government departments and public sector undertakings in the state legislature every year.
Manoranjan Panigrahy, nodal officer of the RTI, Odisha, has been writing to all the departments time and again as is the commission. However, the government departments have done nothing.
"The past experience in most state departments is that there is no compilation of total figures at the department level in respect of their public authorities. Consequently, there has been inordinate delay in submission of the report," said Panigrahy, who had even enclosed a format for the departments to fill in and send the information as top priority by September 15.
"But, we are yet to receive the data from most of the departments," he said.
Officials of the commission also expressed concern about the lack of support from the departments, because they had been writing to the departments since December 2014 but received no response.
"It is required under section 25 of the RTI Act, 2005, that the Odisha Information Commission prepares annual reports after collecting data from different departments with details of the total figures based on the RTI requests filed or are in the stage of first or second appeal," said state information commissioner Laxmi Narayan Patnaik.
An applicant makes the first appeal after not getting the desired information within the prescribed time limit following submission of his or her initial request. If the applicant does not get the information even after the first appeal, he or she may file a second appeal. The annual compilation also includes the rejected RTI requests or landmark cases, in which the information seeker might have led to discovery of something significant.
"But, with most departments not complying with us, we have been unable to prepare our reports for the past two years," said Patnaik.
"We will mention in our reports names of the departments that did not comply and take up the matter with the chief secretary," he said.
The RTI activists are of the view that the reason behind the careless attitude of the various departments is because of lack of monitoring.
"It is essential to keep track of the number and kind of requests made to different departments. But, the public authorities - right from block development officers to collectors - have a lackadaisical attitude towards the annual reports. The primary reason behind this is inadequate monitoring of the departments by the commission," said Pradeep Pradhan, an RTI activist.
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