HC suggests suo motu disclosure of information by govt departments

The Hindu‎‎‎: Madurai: Saturday, April 09, 2016.

The Madras High Court Bench here has suggested that the Chief Secretary could instruct heads of all government departments, Collectors and other State officials to suo motu declare as much information as possible about schemes implemented by them through cost-effective means such as Internet as required under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005.

Justices S. Manikumar and C.T. Selvam made the suggestion while disposing of a public interest litigation petition seeking a direction to the State government to upload all its orders, notifications and circulars on its website without filtering. The judges refused to issue such a direction after observing that the government was already uploading G.O.s of public interest on its website.

Even if some crucial information was found to be missing on the website, it could be obtained by anybody by making a simple application under the RTI Act, the Bench observed. However, referring to Section 4 of the enactment, the judges stressed the need for suo motu disclosure of as much information as possible in order to reduce the burden on Public Information Officers appointed under the Act.

Section 4 mandated every public authority to maintain all its records duly catalogued and indexed in a manner and form which facilitated the right to information under the Act. It also required them to ensure that all records were computerised, within a reasonable time and subject to availability of resources, and connected through a network all over the country on different systems. Further, observing that not all citizens might have access to the Internet, the judges said that dissemination of information through other means such as notice boards and mass media should also be continued.