The
Hindu: Ballari: Saturday, 02 January 2016.
Shekar
Sajjanar, Commissioner, Karnataka Information Commission, said on Friday that
the commission was for disciplinary action against officials who did not pass
information sought under the Right to Information (RTI) Act and the first
appellate authority, which did not dispose of appeals.
Mr. Sajjanar
was here to address a workshop for officials.
He said that
passing on information within the stipulated time was mandatory for officials.
It was also
the duty of the first appellate authority to dispose of the appeals in time.
“Due to the delay, fine to the tune of Rs. 1.69 crore had been imposed on the
erring officials in the last one decade and appeals are mounting before the
commission. To avoid delay, the district administration had to update its catalogue
and indexing periodically and upload data and information on its website to
enable easy access to information,” Mr. Sajjanar said.
According to
him, applications under the RTI Act had been going up every year in the State
while the disposal rate was not proportionate. As many as 4.94 lakh
applications were received in 2013-14 and 4.59 lakh were disposed of. In
2014-15, the number of applications went up to 6.18 lakh, while 5.8 lakh were
disposed of. Most of the applications were being received by the departments of
Revenue, Rural Development and Panchayat Raj, Urban Development, Home,
Transport and Education.
Mr. Sajjanar
said that the commission would take up the delay in disposal of applications
before a high-powered committee headed by the Chief Secretary.
Stating that
the enactment of RTI Act had had its positive impact leading to exposure of
several scams in the country, Mr. Sajjanar said that it was for the State
government and the district administration to improve the infrastructure to
provide information sought for in stipulated time.
Deputy
Commissioner Sameer Shukla, chief executive officer of the zilla panchayat S.S.
Nakul were present.