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| Maintain sanctity of RTI Act | | |
The Right to Information (RTI) Act is a potent tool to seek the information from the government departments. It provides access to services and rights. But a lot needs to be done to maintain the sanctity of the Act.
Recently a RTI activist from Doda district made a stunning disclosure that some officials had allegedly forged his signature to get his application to seek information withdrawn. If the allegations leveled by the activist are found true then it’s the duty of the higher ups to get the matter probed and take to task the officials, who without any fear of law resorted to forgery.
The RTI Act has helped in bringing transparency and has made the officials accountable. But there have been many instances in the past about officials sitting over the queries and not providing the requisite information.
The RTI Act of the erstwhile State was repealed by the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Act, 2019 passed by the Parliament and Central Right to Information Act, 2005 became applicable from October 31, 2019. The RTI Act has already come into force, meaning thereby that the public authorities in Jammu and Kashmir are legally bound to comply with the provision of law.
The Act is aimed at fostering a more informed citizenry and an accountable government. However there have been persistent and growing worries and one such remains non adherence by many departments to Section 4 of Act which makes it binding for all the public authorities operating in the Jammu and Kashmir to make the suo-moto and proactive disclosure of all the permissible information available with them within a period of 120 days from the date of commencement of the legislation.
The officials should understand that they are bound to provide information and they cannot deny it. Forging signatures to get the application withdrawn is unacceptable.
To prevent the officials from sitting over the files the General Administration Department (GAD) time and again has issued circulars and asked such departments who have not so far created their own departmental websites to do so within a fortnight and host the requisite material on the websites under the provisions of the Right to Information Act on regular basis. Besides providing the information of the Act, the departments should upload the record of RTI applications seeking the information and the status whether the information has been provided or not. More steps have to be taken to make the officials accountable and prevent the process of seeking information getting delayed. |
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