Times of
India: Chennai: Thursday, September 13, 2018.
Stating
that excuses given by Coimbatore corporation commissioner K Vijayakarthikeyan
cannot be accepted, the local bodies ombudsman has ordered him to ensure that
all the council resolutions from July 2016 till date are uploaded onto the
website. He said the corporations should function in a transparent manner.
As
per the Right to Information Act, 2005, the civic body is supposed to make all
the resolutions online as they are public documents.
This
was in response to a petition filed in June this year with the ombudsmen that
sought publishing of all the resolutions on the Coimbatore corporation website.
TOI had reported in July how all the corporations including Chennai corporation
were not putting up the resolutions passed by the special officer.
In
the enquiry conducted, Vijayakarthikeyan stated that the state government was
implementing a new application named Urban Tree Information System because of
which their websites were being updated. He also stated that collection of
revenue and other routine work resulted in a delay in uploading the
resolutions. The council wing secretary, A Amalraj also stated the same.
In
the petition, S P Thiyagarajan had stated that as per RTI rules, the
resolutions should be uploaded on the corporation website regularly. “These
works are carried out with public money for the public. They have the right to
know where the money is being spent,” said Thiyagarajan. When the councillors
were there, after every meeting, the resolutions would be uploaded on the
website. This practice had ended with the council dissolving in 2016.
It
was not just Coimbatore but all the corporations across the state were not
uploading the resolutions online. S P Thiyagarajan said he was glad that the
Ombudsman had passed an order in their favour and stated that he would write to
him again seeking a similar order for all corporations in the state.
.JPG)
.JPG)
