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| In Omar's RTI era, GAD website hides too much | | | Syed Junaid Hashmi
JAMMU, Apr 13: Chief Minister Omar Abdullah's much touted Right to Information (RTI) Act-2009 seems to have miserably failed to impress his own General Administration Department (GAD) since it has withdrawn most of the controversial and administratively important information from its website.
Go to www.jkgad.nic.in and you would find how GAD which is now headed by new Secretary Mohammed Asharaf Bukhari has used all expertise to ensure that those logging on to the website do not get the required information without much trouble and are forced to seek the same through RTI whose reply the department knows it can delay on one pretext or the other.
The department has used all intellect in withdrawing the information about the last three tenures and postings of IAS as well as KAS officers. This seemingly has been done to keep people as well media away from questioning the logic of shuttling the officers from one place to the other incomplete breach of the 2 year mandatory norm as recommended by Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC).
Even for knowing the present place of posting of KAS as well as IAS officers, one has to download PDF file. The downloaded file is in such a mess that not much could be made out the information provided in this file. The website makes no mention of the date of posting of the IAS officer in the said department and instead, gives the reader an idea about the age of the said IAS officer.
This has been done to ensure that badly crafted 'transfer and posting' policy is neither criticised nor trashed in the public. However, the details of KAS officers do make a mention of date of their posting in the department where they are presently. But the manner in which the administrative details have been posted do indicate that those heading GAD had been seemingly advised to ensure that readers are unable to get the required information easily. What has made this exercise useless is the fact that DOPT website of the government of India contains all these minute details of the IAS officers of Jammu and Kashmir cadre. More importantly, the details available with DOPT are complete and one can easily see how most of the IAS officers have been shuttled within months and weeks, without assigning any specific reason.
Go to the Council of Ministers option and you would find out that barring Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, GAD neither knows Date of Birth nor profile of the cabinet ministers as well as Ministers of State (MOS). Go to prosecution sanction column, you would find that the department has either not updated the data or has failed to give any sanction for prosecution after December 2010.
The departmental e-mails have been written in a pre-historic and language of 1990. Orders are posted seemingly as per the whims and fancies of the officials. The missing numbers indicate that the state still has much to hide from its people. What makes the GAD website interesting is the fact that instead of hosting the agenda for the cabinet meeting on the website, the same is selectively leaked.
The RTI has been made a tool to hide information, said an official while adding that even for the primary level information which should be necessarily available on the website, one is asked to file RTI. |
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