Saturday, January 02, 2016

RTI: panel for action against officials who do not pass on information

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.