Financial Express: New Delhi: Friday,
September 02, 2016.
Law students
will be engaged by the Centre to suggest ways for improving transparency and
accountability in the governance through effective implementation of the Right
to Information (RTI) Act.
The
Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), nodal authority for implementation
of the RTI Act, has decided to give internship to students pursuing law courses
to assess voluntary disclosures by various central government ministries.
“The primary
goal of the scheme is to contribute towards more accountable and transparent
government and it has several components including programmes for awareness
generation, training and e-governance initiatives for RTI for achieving the
purpose,” the DoPT said in an order issued today.
The programme
will help the ministry or department consolidate and document its experience in
the implementation of RTI, its successes, constraints in implementation,
identify the areas which need more attention, address the gap areas and suggest
what more needs to be done to help achieve the objectives of the Act.
“The interns
would be familiarised with the process of seeking information and enabling
access to information under the RTI regime,” it said.
The RTI Act,
2005, which was enacted by the UPA government, empowers a citizen to seek a
time-bound reply on information related to the governance.
The
applicants would analyse the applications to get an overall picture and do an
in-depth study of the information sought and the response by the public
authority.
“The interns
would also study the status of suo motu disclosure of the ministry or
department allotted to them for their internship and would submit a report in
this regard,” the DoPT said.
As per the
RTI Act, public authorities which mean central government departments are
mandated to put in public domain governance related information being dealt by
them in public domain.
Based on the
analysis of RTI applications made by them, the interns have to make specific
recommendations regarding various kinds of information or documents of the
department concerned that can be included in the suo motu disclosures, besides
major governance policy initiatives that can be taken to improve governance, it
said.
The proposed
internships would be for duration of one month starting December 15, 2016
onwards. Interns will be entitled to a consolidated remuneration of Rs 10,000
payable on submission and acceptance of their internship reports by the
competent authority in the DoPT.
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