Bhubaneswar: After more than 14 years since the passing of the Right to Information (RTI) Act which was mandated to bring more transparency with the disclosure of public information, the government offices in the central as well as state departments seem to have learnt the new art of diluting the RTI Act.
Many departments are now denying information to the public, journalists and RTI activists. The information was earlier made available on their websites. With the passage of time, the government babus have learnt the various ways to deny information to the public with excuses ranging from information not being available in a compiled format, not filing the RTI application in the prescribed format, diverting the RTI to multiple departments and many others.
The case of Odisha also becomes curious with the extra demanding clause of furnishing the copy of the identity card of the applicant and filing it with a fixed format. While many government departments allow information if ID card is attached, some departments reject the applications citing not receiving the application in the prescribed format, leaving many RTI activists from outside the state baffled.
“We have many RTI applications from Delhi, Bangalore and other states. We have rejected all of them because most of them were not filed in the format we use,” said an official working with the State Police Headquarters RTI Cell.
But researchers find the RTI system of Odisha strange. A researcher based in Bangalore requesting anonymity said, “For a project work I had filed RTI applications in all Indian states. Odisha was one of the few states which reject applications for not filing the applications in the format the departments like. Most Indian states accept RTI pleas filed on plain paper.”
However, there are other major issues too which delay the RTI application or sometimes denying information. Pradipta Nayak is a human rights activist from the city who often files RTI for his works. He said, “Many problems have now crept into the RTI sector in Odisha. Now the head of departments are reluctant to give information within 30 days by compiling information from their subordinates. Instead, they send it to multiple subordinate cells and departments delaying the whole process.”
He also said that many Public Information Officials (PIOs) of the RTI cells are reluctant to give crucial information to the applications which can put their bosses in trouble and try to suppress the information by citing reasons like ‘Official Secrets’, ‘Confidential Information’, ‘Not Audited Yet’, ‘Not Compiled’ and so on.
A number of RTI applications from the state departments also never see any response. Numerous RTI applications filed by some reporters of this newspaper were not answered even after more than six months. Not only state governments, the Union government which accepts online RTI applications also are now reluctant to share informstion.
Some of the queries raised by this newspaper’s reporters which were never answered have been included into the box for reference. Many of the information in many such RTI applications could have given hints of corruption and other wrong practices.