Early Times Report
Srinagar, Dec 26: The State High Court has directed government to adhere to the mandate of the J&K Right to Information Act 2009 in letter and spirit particularly Section 4 of the legislation which calls for oluntary disclosure of information by all the departments on their websites and other modes prescribed under law.
The directions were passed by a division bench of Justices Ali Mohammad Magrey and Sanjeev kumar while closing a Public Interest Litigation filed by J&K Right to Information Movement through its counsel advocate Shafaqat Nazir.
The PIL had sought directions to the government to make suo-moto and pro-active disclosure of all available permissible information through official websites and other modes prescribed under law.
Shafqat submitted that Section 4 of the J&K RTI Act made it obligatory and compulsory for all the public authorities operating in the State to make the suo-moto and pro-active disclosure of all the permissible information available with them within a period of 120 days from the date of commencement of the Act. "To the utter dismay of the petitioner organization, in particular, and the public at large, in general, almost all the public authorities operating under the administrative control of the respondents have miserably failed to satisfy the requirements of the law," he said.
M A Chashoo, the Additional Advocate General, submitted that there shall be no difficulty for the government to adhere to the instructions and directions contained in the Act.
After hearing both the sides, the division bench directed the respondents to strictly adhere to the mandate of the J&K Right to Information Act, 2009, in letter and spirit, particularly Section 4 of the Act." |
