Daily Excelsior: Srinagar: Monday,
March 20, 2017.
On March 20,
2017, the Jammu & Kashmir Right to Information Act 2009 completes its
eighth year of enactment. 20th of March 2017 is hence being celebrated as RTI
Day by the stakeholders of RTI particularly the RTI Activists belonging to
different RTI based groups in the state. J&K RTI Foundation is also
participating in the celebration of RTI day and is inviting suggestions for its
people friendly website www.jkrtifoundation.com and the www.budgamunheard.org
at Town Hall Magam where the District Administration Budgam is joining as well.
This is not the first time when the people themselves are trying to strengthen
and bring awareness of RTI in Jammu and Kashmir, but has its roots long before
when the RTI Act was enacted in 2009.
If we go into the history of the Right to
Information culture in the country, we will find that people have always played
a great role in the strengthening of RTI in the state. It was only after a
continuing and tireless struggle by the local civil society members and the
great role played by some prominent personalities like Wajahat Habibullah,
Arvind Kejriwal, Aruna Roy, Maja Daruwala, Venkatesh Nayak, our current State
Chief Information Commissioner Khursheed Ahmad Ganie and so on …., that the
revolutionary and most people friendly RTI Act 2009 was enacted by the State
Legislature which is by and large a replica of the Central RTI Act 2005.
At present, the RTI Activists are demanding
the restoration of RTI Rules 2010 which the Government has not been doing since
2012. Many Activists from both Jammu and Kashmir Regions have even protested
for this and also for the appointment of Information Commissioners in J&K
SIC. Although we have CIC now but the other two Information Commissioners are
yet to be appointed.
The Jammu and Kashmir RTI Act has empowered
the people and has made the rights of people more enforceable and approachable
be it economic, social or political. But if a thorough and deep analysis is
made, one will say that the Act is confined either to the Government officials
or the activists, the reasons being non-awareness of the common man, for whom
the Act would have been very much beneficial. As usual, the stakeholders of RTI
and the activists who find the Act as one of the potent tools to curb the spate
of corruption in Jammu Kashmir have analysed and found the Government’s
irresponsive attitude towards the effective implementation of the Act this year
also.
The Government may claim of well-planned
programmes, schemes and policies of economic development as well as social
upliftment but due to lack of authentic and timely information, people do not
avail of their benefits. They are often compelled to take recourse to corrupt
means at the behest of touts and other undesirable elements to know and derive
benefits from such programmes.
Government and the public authorities have
again failed to implement the Act in an effective way. No doubt in the past,
the J&K State Information Commission had issued orders and correspondence
was made, pressing for the implementation of the Act and the compliance of the
public authorities, but still there is lack of information on the websites of
the Government Departments.
Non-maintenance and the digitalization of
records are the biggest challenges before the right to information movement in
the state. There are still many departments who don’t have websites yet. Even
our administrative departments have not uploaded complete information obligatory
under Section 4 of the JK RTI Act on their websites. There has been poor
response from the Public Authorities and the Government as well. Even on the
website of J&K SIC itself, there are a lot of loopholes related to
disclosures under Section 4 of RTI Act. The last annual report available on
www.jksic.com is of 2013-14 and no further reports are available for public
access. Further the J&K SIC is not holding any meetings with the members of
Civil Society. According to their report of 2013-14 only one meeting was held
with the Civil Society Organizations in 2013-14.The report also says that only
0.06% of the total RTI Applications filed were followed by first appeal and is
said to be a success. But as per our analysis it is overall a failure as 95 percent
of people either don’t know how to file first appeal or are not able to locate
FAA or are fed up due to non-compliance at the PIO level.
Recommendations
Following recommendations have been received
from different Activists:
· The people from rural areas still don’t know how to file
an RTI Application and even if somebody files his process stops at the
appealing level. Activists believe that 90 percent of the filing will fall if
Section 4 of the Act is implemented and if Section 23 is followed, a good
majority of public will get aware of the Act. Need of the hour is to implement
Section 4 from CM to Panchayat level and there needs to be an impressive
compliance mechanism for its implementation.
· The PIOs need to be trained in an efficient way and erring
officials need to be treated according to the law. The PIOs are usually
qualified people, so there is no excuse of training if one thinks deeply. Only
one thing that needs to be done is to issue orders and guidelines for
PIOs/APIOs to go through the soft copy of the JK RTI Act available online on
Internet and get it implemented in true spirit in a time bound compliance
mechanism.
· Digitalisation of records is another important point
under Section 4 of the Act. Once the digitalization of the records is done the
complete information can be made available to the people who have access to
internet. It will eradicate non-sense words like “blackmailing” as there would
be no scope of hide and seek. Objective of transparency will be achieved up to
a large extent.
· Last year in February, the JK SIC opened a link on its
website through which we can make second appeals/complaints online. Similarly,
there needs to be a link through which one can file RTI application and first
appeal and the same may be made available online. And after the response comes,
same may be put on the website. This will also minimize the number of RTI
filings and also the chances of harassment/killing of RTI Applicants and so
called “blackmailing” by RTI applicants.
· Common Service Centres (CSCs) is a scheme of the
Government of India under which 1,00,000 CSCs are being created. This means
that there would be approximately one CSC for every six villages. The
Government should use these CSCs to collect applications (to act as APIO, as per
Section 5(2)) and facilitate citizens in filing RTI Applications.
· Department of Posts (GoI) is already a designated APIO
for Central Government. It is suggested that the State Governments also accord
status of APIO to post offices and designate staff to assist citizens in
drafting and forwarding the applications/appeals.
· Complaints are often that the postal orders are not
available readily at post offices, so if RTI envelopes with an inbuilt cost of
application fee are introduces, the process of payment of application fee by
applicants will be easier.
To Conclude
RTI is a landmark legislation as it was
enacted after a sustained demand and struggle from the grassroots level. It
empowered ordinary citizen to question Government accustomed to function in
unbreachable secrecy. Yet, a lot remains to be done to make transparency and
accountability a regular feature of governance in Jammu and Kashmir. The
urban-rural divide in its access contradicts its foremost objective of bringing
information and thus, empowerment to the masses at grassroots level. The lack
of reforms denies citizens the opportunity to make governance people-centric.
Given that the weakness of the RTI lies in its weak implementation, the next
phase of RTI Act needs to focus on increasing the authority of State
Information Commission in order to set in motion the practical regime of RTI by
ensuring much needed compliance from Government agencies. We know that the Government has failed as far as
the awareness of the Act is concerned, hence the NGOs, students, RTI Activists
and all other conscious people must organize seminars, programs etc and discuss
the RTI Act and recommend its wider use so as to make it more familiar in
resolving public grievances.
(The author
is Chairman J&K RTI Foundation)
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