Moneylife: New Delhi: Tuesday, August 14, 2018.
The Election
Commission of India (ECI) which was found not responding to about 2,000
applications filed online on RTIOnline portal
(https://rtionline.gov.in/index.php), says that all these have now been
disposed in offline mode.
Responding to
a Moneylife article (Read: 2,000 applications remain pending, as ECI did not
bother to check RTIonline portal!), Shefali Sharan, spokesperson for the
Election Commission, says, "...it is stated that all RTI applications
received on the RTI portal of department of personnel & training (DoPT) for
ECI were disposed off, offline. There were about 2500 applications on the DoPT
portal and the same have been disposed of offline. Thus these offline disposals
did not get reflected on the DoPT portal."
In an order
issued on 4 January 2018, Radha Krishna Mathur, the (then) chief information
commissioner, stated that that despite training from DoPT and various other
correspondence made with DoPT, the ECI has not opened and accessed the RTI
applications or first appeals of the applicants. “The Commission further
observed that it appears that the ECI did not take effective steps to ensure
that the RTI applications or first appeals are not filed on the web portal of
the DoPT. Further, they took no steps to access the RTI applications and first
appeals, which had already got filed on DoPT RTI portal, which has resulted in
piling up of the unattended RTI applications and first appeals,” the CIC had
said in its order.
The story
published by Moneylife was based on decision given by CIC, which observed that
ECI failed to ensure effective steps for linking and listing them as public
authority on RTIonline portal. Also the ECI did not consider accessing RTI
applications and appeals from DoPT, which resulted in such huge pendency of
applications and appeals. Though ECI stated that they are developing their own
portal for RTI, they did not mention any deadline to it, the CIC observed.
The ECI,
however, states, "...ECI has launched its own RTI online portal on the
ECI's website on 6 June 2018. ECI has been receiving online applications on
that portal and these are disposed off online. Till now about 405 applications
have been made on the ECI RTI portal...kindly inform your correspondent of the
facts detailed and advise him to check his facts before publishing such a
story..."
Commenting on
this matter, Shailesh Gandhi, former central information commissioner, says,
"(the) ECI seems worse than I imagined. It does not even know what it has
stated and has been recorded at para 10 of the CIC order. The original sin of
not accepting the online applications was bad enough. Now they compound it.
What is the reliability of the organisation?"
Para 10 of
the CIC order issued on 4 January 2018, states "The Commission observed
that the respondent, in support of their plea stated that they are developing
their own portal to deal with the online RTI applications/ first appeals of the
applicants. However, a deadline to launch this portal is not yet to be fixed.
During the hearing, the Commission noted that till date, approx. 2000 RTI
applications were pending for disposal by the ECI which are yet to be accessed
from DoPT portal. It was further noted that the respondent has not taken up any
special drive for the disposal of such a large number of RTI applications/
first appeals. The Commission is of the view that the respondent should launch
a special drive and ensure disposal of the online RTI applications/ first
appeals within deadlines as prescribed under the RTI Act."
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