Jammu Kashmir

RTI applicants a harried lot as officials pass the buck

Get information in ‘bits and pieces’ from public officers

Tribune News Service

Arteev Sharma

Jammu, November 14

Call it lack of sufficient training or well-planned divisionary tactics on the part of public information officers (PIOs) in government departments, applicants under the J&K Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2009, are a harried lot in the state as they are forced to get information in “bits and pieces”.

This is happening because the PIOs generally transfer the RTI applications to different departments or various wings of the same department by “deliberately” invoking the Section 6 (3) to shun their responsibilities and deprive the applicants of their rights.

Experts believe that it is not necessary for the PIOs to invoke Section 6 (3) every time and transfer the application to other public authority. The Section 6 (3) mandates a public authority to transfer the RTI application or such part of it as may be appropriate to other public authority and inform the applicant immediately about such transfer as the information in the case is held by another public authority.

What is intriguing is that it also causes huge loss to the state exchequer because the departments spend a good amount on “handling and posting” of letters to applicants. This also shows that the departments have failed to maintain a centralised data, causing harassment to applicants.

An applicant, who filed an application with the PIO of Power Development Department at the civil secretariat on August 9 this year, has had a “horrendous experience” as he has been receiving official letters from the departments on a regular basis, without getting sufficient and relevant information to date.

“It is distressing to see the postman coming on a regular basis carrying letters from the department, which has been providing information in bits and pieces. I filed the application with the PIO with the hope that the department would have centralised data about metered and non-metered connections at the district level, amount spent on e-metering and purchase of electricity and revenue generated from all three regions but it has turned out to be a bitter experience for me,” the applicant said.

The PIO while invoking Section 6 (3) transferred the application to different wings of the same department without bothering about the loss to the state exchequer and inconvenience to the information seeker.

Raman Sharma, a noted activist, sharing a similar experience and said, “I filed an RTI application with the General Administration Department in October seeking the details of total number of permissions sought by the state from the Government of India in response to the requests of political functionaries for their visits to foreign countries and how many have been turned down. The GAD transferred the application to different administrative secretaries who, in turn, forwarded it to their sub-offices. Now, I am getting a lot of letters from different departments without any relevant information”.

The activist said the PIOs invoking Section 6 (3) without thoroughly going into the matter either lack sufficient training or it is their divisionary tactics “to find an escape route”. “In the era of digitisation, this is sheer wastage of public money because any government department is supposed to have centralised data with all district-level information,” Sharma said.

Official sources said the State Information Commission has taken a serious note of this “inconvenience” being caused to the applicants after it found that the PIOs “ignorantly” transfer the applications under Section 6(3), thereby violating Section 5 (3), which states that every PIO would deal with requests from persons seeking information and render reasonable assistance to the applicant.

“The PIO in a senior public authority is supposed to collect, compile and provide the information to an applicant without putting him in trouble,” a source said, adding that a major decision is expected to be taken soon in the matter.

State panel to take corrective measures 

The State Information Commission has taken a serious note of this "inconvenience" being caused to the RTI applicants after it found that the public information officers "ignorantly" transfer the applications. A major decision is expected to be taken soon in the matter, said official sources