“For forms of Government let fools contest; whatever is governed best is best,” sings the bard. The Right To Information Act was given enormous media hype when it was passed some years ago. The impression given was that with the passing of the Act any information regarding anything could be made available to any Indian citizen. Over imposing bureaucracy secretly chaffed at the Act, for it knew that the reach of ordinary Indian to the vaulted and insulated information would not be that easy. That is precisely what happened. No surprise that the Central Information Commission has questioned the Government bodies with regard to meeting the requirement of mandatory suo-motu disclosures under the RTI Act and said that there was need for “introspection” as only a little over one-fourth of the 2,276 public authorities have followed statutory guidelines. This is scathing criticism of the Government and shows how contemptuously the Act is treated. Leave aside the mandatory disclosure of information as stipulated in the Act, the institutions and organizations are not prepared to part with information even after persistent requests and supplications. That is why the Chief Information Officer has said that there is need of some introspection among public institutions. All public authorities are required to submit information online through a prescribed pro-forma. It clearly asks whether information has been posted on the website or not. Strangely, public authorities have not generally adhered to this stipulation.
All this suggests that the RTI Act has not been allowed to work effectively and the purpose seems to be defeated unless the Government injects some forceful mechanism of implementation of the clauses of the Act. We may again point towards the inevitability of stringent rules of accountability failing which the Act may remain imbecile.
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel