Rajnath inaugurates CIC Annual Convention

Bureaucracy Today‎: New Delhi: Wednesday, November 09, 2016.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh inaugurated the 2-day 11th Annual Convention of Central Information Commission (CIC) in New Delhi.

While delivering the inaugural address, Rajnath Singh said that Right to Information (RTI) Act is a powerful medium of two-way communication between the citizens and the Government. On the one hand, the citizens get information through this act and on the other hand, the Government gets new ideas for formulating people friendly policy and to reform the governance system, when people ask such information.

Programmes like ‘My Gov.in’ website provide a platform for two-way communication between the Government and the citizens. This benefits both the citizens and the Government, he added. He also said that the ‘Top-down’ approach is now getting converted into ‘Bottom-up’ approach.

During the day, the Convention had arranged four technical sessions covering various aspects of institutional governance in India and its implications on RTI.

The technical session on RTI in Railways was chaired by Bimal Julka, Information Commissioner and Amitava Bhattacharyya, Information Commissioner along with Mohd. Jamshed, Member (Traffic), Ministry of Railways. 

The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) convened a session on the RTI online web portal. This portal is expected to cover almost half the public authorities in near future.

Another technical session on RTI in Public Sector Undertakings was chaired by Sudhir Bhargava, Information Commissioner and Divya Prakash Sinha, Information Commissioner along with Dr. U.D Choubey, Director General, SCOPE. In this session PSUs namely National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL), Rajasthan Electronics & Instruments Limited (REIL) and South Eastern Coalfields Limited (SECL) deliberated on key issues concerning the implementation of the RTI Act in their respective Public Sector Undertakings.

The technical session on RTI in Regulators such as RBI and IRDAI, Banks and Insurance companies was chaired by Information Commissioners Sharat Sabharwal and Manjula Prasher.