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Under RTI : Most of CMOs does not have Proactive Disclosures Systems
Highlights
The RTI act has completed ten years and the Prime Minister on the eve of celebration of 10th year of RTI has acknowledged that “ People should have a right to question the government.
The RTI act has completed ten years and the Prime Minister on the eve of celebration of 10th year of RTI has acknowledged that “ People should have a right to question the government. This is the foundation of democracy; this will increase faith in democracy. When matter goes online, transparency increases automatically. Trust also increases”, but the fact shows neither PMO nor some CMos are interested in revealing the information under the act.
One of the most important significant provisions of the RTI act is the proactive disclosure under Section 4. Even after ten years of RTI, it is wonder to know that the PMO & several CMOs are guilty of not making proactive disclosure on their websites.
The RTI Act has a very comprehensive proactive disclosure provision at section 4 says, “It shall be a constant endeavour of every public authority to take steps in accordance with the requirements of clause (b) of sub-section (1) to provide as much information suo motu to the public at regular intervals through various means of communications, including internet, so that the public have minimum resort to the use of this Act to obtain information.”
Many government departments are yet to implement section 4 of the RTI act in Toto, despite of remainders by the Departmental of Personnel & Training (DoPT), GOI. Section 4 of the RTI act mandates government departments (public authorities) to proactively disclose certain information, so that the need for filing an application would come down. Some of information in Section 4 is immensely helpful to the common man. It mandates to furnish the certain details to the Public by dedicating a RTI page on the portal of each department, including PMO and CMO’s websites.
The PMO has a dedicated page on the portal which entails details of Public Information Officer, details of Foreign & Domestic Tours of the PM along with expenditure, details of assets/liabilities of the Union Cabinet members. It has some other information and the disclosures to be made under section 4 are absent on the PMO website.
On the analysis of CMOs portals of twenty nine states and two Union Territories (Delhi and Puducherry), all these states have their CMs. Out of 31 States/UTs, only 20 CMOs have dedicated websites including Telangana and Andhra Pradesh and surprisingly 11 CMOs including States like Punjab, Maharashtra, Delhi and Tamil Nadu about 35 percent do not have a dedicated website.
Some CMs have personal websites, but do not have an official website for the CMO. It is surprising to know that much ado has given Digital India, even in this age of Digital India, the Chief Minister, who is the executive head of the State, does not have a dedicated website gives an impression that concerned States have no faith on RTI Act.
It also analysed that out of 20 States/UTs, with a dedicated website, 12 states do not have any information on RTI such as Gujarat, Sikkim, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgah, West Bengal, Jharkand and Haryana are part of this. Only eight states have RTI information on the website namely Jammu & Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odissa, Karanataka and Kerala.
Even taking those states into consideration that do not have a dedicated website for the CMO, only 14 of them had RTI details of the CMO on the official government website.
In other words, 6 states that did not have a dedicated website for the CMO still had RTI details of the CMO in some other government website. Out of the 14 States/UTs with RTI details, only 9 of them had details of the Public Information Officer (PIO) and the Assistant Public Information Officer (APIO), the nodal officers in charge of RTI implementation in government departments.
On account of proactive disclosures only 5 States had proactive disclosure of the CMO, on the website, as mandated under Section 4 of the RTI. These five states are Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka. Only in one out of every 6 States, the CMO has made proactive disclosure as mandated by the RTI act even after 10 years.
Within these five states, Jammu & Kashmir and Punjab CMOs have made their disclosure only in English. In Maharashtra, the disclosure was made only in the local language. In Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka, the disclosure was made in both English & the local language.
The CMO of Uttar Pradesh does best as far as RTI is disclosure is concerned. The disclosures are detailed and are available in both English and Hindi. In the remaining 4 states, the proactive disclosure details provided by the CMO are outdated.
It is the time for the CMOs to implement RTI act in letter and spirit, as the CMOs are expected to stand as the right testament to other departments and not the other way and make the full proactive disclosure at the earliest.
By Rajendera Kumar
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