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| Will Omar, Mehbooba work together on RTI? | | |
Sant Kumar Sharma
Jammu, Sept 11: The Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah, and Mehbooba Mufti, represent the GenNext of the two most powerful political families of Jammu & Kashmir, the Abdullahs and the Muftis. Fiercely competitive and extremely articulate, both of them are perpetual rivals as the politics they pursue runs parallel.
Almost on every issue under the sun, they can be trusted to take diametrically opposite positions. That can pose problems for the success of the Right To Information (RTI) movement in the state.
So far, the government has not appointed the mandatory State Information Commission (SIC). The Government is obliged to establish a selection committee to appoint the SIC. According to government’s senior-most law officer, Mr A.R. Kochak, the committee will include the CM, the Leader of the Opposition (i.e. or leader of largest opposition party), the Chairman of the Legislative Council, and the Chief Justice of the Jammu & Kashmir High Court.
Since Mehbooba Mufti leads the largest opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), she is the natural choice for the selection committee. That brings us to the question of whether the CM and Mehbooba will work together on RTI.
So far, neither the CM’s camp nor the PDP has said anything about the SIC but the issue is likely to crop up, sooner rather than later, once the district development board meetings are over. The PDP has already given some indications that it intends to work on strengthening the RTI as a tool for information gathering.
A couple of days ago, several party legislators including the party patriarch, Mr Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, participated in a RTI workshop organized by the youth wing of the PDP at Srinagar. At the valedictory function, Mufti said the political class, across party lines, and the civil society, will have to work in tandem to ensure transparency in government.
Mufti said J&K had suffered ``an information black-out’’ for decades and this has to be changed. Emphasizing that public awareness was of utmost importance, he urged the youth to learn to use the provisions of the RTI effectively to ferret out information.
He identified rural development, social welfare and public distribution as areas where the RTI can have maximum impact to ensure better governance.
Questioning the high rate of fees charged under the revised RTI Act, Mufti had urged the government to reduce the rates immediately to make the Act more meaningful.
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