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| BDO makes mockery of RTI Act, demands Rs. 99000 as Xerox charges | | |  Asif Iqbal Naik
Early Times Report
KISHTWAR, Mar 14: Making brazen mockery of the RTI Act, a Block Development Officer has demanded Rs. 99000 as Xerox fee charges for providing the information of one block to the RTI applicant.
As per the details available with ET, after BDO Kishtwar vide a letter No . 975, Dated 20-11-2018 asked the RTI applicants to deposit Rs. 98000 in the official account No. SG-5591-GIC on account of cost of printing/Photostat charges, etc for furnishing of information sought by him.
The non- serious approach of the RDD department towards providing information under RTI Act 2009 could be gauged from the fact that the RTI was filed in the office of ACD Kishtwar with receipt No. ACDK/1562 Dated 22-11-2018 and the information is related to all the blocks of Kishtwar District which is yet to be delivered to him even after nearly four months and instead the RTI applicant is being harassed through the shocking letters asking him to deposit money in lakhs.
The RTI applicant Khalid Nazir Dar son of Nazir Ahmed Resident of Kichloo Mohallah Kishtwar told ET that the information demanded by him cane be given in less than hundred pages, but the amount demanded by the BDO Kishtwar earlier suggested that the information was based on 49000 pages in one block while Kishtwar District has 13 blocks and as such he was required to deposit around Rs. 12.74 lacs. He said that in the fresh letter written by the BDO Padder vide letter No. BDOP/RTI/306-307 Dated 1-3-2019 he has been asked to deposit Rs. 99000 as Xerox Charges which shocked him.
It is pertinent to mention that the corruption in the RDD in the state of J&K is nothing new and many employees working in the department, particularly the employees associated with centrally sponsored scheme MGNREGA have turn millionaire overnight and have accumulated huge moveable and immovable properties through fraudulent means.
Though various complaints were lodged against many of these employees indulging into corruption and illegal means, but till date no guilty official was punished due to faulty system and involvement of corruption at highest level.
The Early Times in its report in the month of September 2018 highlighted the nexus of the corrupt at highest level in District Kishtwar, wherein the office of the ACD Kishtwar had become a den of corruption. The report also exposed how the corruption money from ground level employees such as GRS, Technical Assistant, VLWs, MPWs, JE's, BDO and others was being collected in a systematic way from the office of ACD Kishtwar from where the share of corruption money collected was equally distributed from top to bottom. |
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