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| Mr CM you have violated RTI Act, it is not your achievement? | | |
Early Times Report
Jammu, Nov 9: During his election related public meetings Chief Minister Omar Abdullah highlights the achievements of his Government by talking about enactment of progressive legislations like Right to Information Act (RTI) and Public Services Guarantee Act (PSGA) and State Vigilance Commission Act by NC lead Government. All these laws are indeed very progressive but as far as implementation by his Government is considered, the situation is very much discouraging. Leaving PSGA and SVC Act aside, the implementation of just one of the important provisions of J&K RTI Act 2009 contained under section 4 (1) (b) wherein public authorities have to make pro active, voluntary or suo moto disclosures, the results are very very bad. It is now more than five years since the existing version of RTI Act was passed by the state legislature but if we analyze its practical implementation, the tall claims of Chief Minister get exposed because Government itself has failed to adhere to the guidelines of the RTI law.
What is Pro active disclosure under section 4 of RTI Act?? J&K RTI Act 2009 was enacted on March 20th 2009 but even after elapse of more than five years the Government departments have miserably failed to adhere to the guidelines of this historic law. Even the office of Chief Minister has not implemented this provision of the law. One of the essential guidelines was to make voluntary disclosure by the public authorities contained in the section 4 (1) (b) of J&K RTI Act 2009. Under section 4 (1) (b) all the Public Authorities which includes Government departments, semi Government departments, corporations, boards, councils etc have to make proactive disclosure of all official orders, circulars, notices etc so that such information is readily available in the public domain through the official Government websites, notice boards, sign boards etc and people need not to seek such information under RTI Act. As per J&K RTI Act 2009 the proactive disclosure was to be made within four months (120 days) of the enactment of the State RTI Act. The J&K RTI Act was enacted on March 20th 2009 and the Government should have made the voluntary / suo moto disclosures by the end of July 2009 but even till date the 80 % of the Government departments that includes CM's office, boards, corporations, semi Government department's etc haven't done so which is a clear violation of J&K RTI Act 2009.
The J&K State Information Commission (SIC) an apex body to ensure implementation of Right to Information in the state has also tried its level best to grill the Government for the blatant violation of RTI law in state viz a viz implementation of section 4 (1) (b) (voluntary disclosure). From the last one year the Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) GR Sufi has issued several orders against many public authorities directing them to upload all the information about official policies, orders, circulars, seniority lists, beneficiaries of various Government schemes etc on their official websites under an intimation to SIC but this hasn't been done. One cannot find these details even on the official website of CM's Secretariat, how can he claim that he has enacted a progressive law like RTI Act ? Mere having a link of section 4 of J&K RTI Act 2009 on the official website of Chief Ministers Secretariat cannot acquit Omar Abdullah from the violation he has made towards RTI implementation in J&K? He was instrumental in making amending and weakening the J&K RTI rules 2010 as well which had turned the State Information Commission into a lame duck . |
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