*Ill-informed persons can’t implement law: CIC
Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Jan 18: Though this revolutionary legislation was enacted in Jammu and Kashmir about six years back, large number of public authorities in Jammu and Kashmir are still ignorant about provisions of the Right to Information Act, 2009 as a result of which applicants are denied timely information as well as unnecessary burden is put on the State Information Commission in the form of appeals.
What to talk of public authorities, the Government is also not creating awareness among the common masses about this legislation and the same is resulting into filing of unwanted and multiple applications just with the intention to pressurize the Government officers and officials.
The Section 23 of the Right to Information Act, 2009 clearly states that Government shall develop and organize educational programmes to advance the understanding of public particularly disadvantaged communities as to how to exercise the rights contemplated under the Act.
As per this Section, the Government may, to the extent of availability of financial and other resources, encourage public authorities to participate in the development and organization of programmes and to undertake such programmes themselves. The provision for such programmes has been kept in the Act with the sole objective of promoting timely and effective dissemination of accurate information by public authorities about their activities. Moreover, the aim is to train the Public Information Officers (PIOs) and produce relevant training materials for use by the public authorities.
However, not much attention has been paid towards these provisions of the Act by the successive Governments as a result of which large number of public authorities in the State continued to remain ignorant about the Act, sources told EXCELSIOR, adding “it is due to lack of knowledge about the provisions of the Act that even for small information the applicants are getting compelled to file appeals against the Public Information Officers (PIOs) and First Appellate Authorities”.
“Those applications which can be disposed of with just a minor direction to the concerned official or by providing timely information to the applicants are reaching to the State Information Commission”, sources further said, adding “the intensity of ignorance about the provisions of the Act can be gauged from the fact that large number of officers, who have been designated as Public Information Officers (PIOs) are not aware about the copying charges required to be requisitioned and demanded from the applicants”.
In one of his latest judgment, the Chief Information Commissioner, G R Sufi has observed: “The Commission is shocked and pained to observe that inspite of the fact that the concept of the RTI Act in the State has originated in 2004 and replaced by a revolutionary legislation like J&K State RTI Act, 2009, public authorities are still ignorant of the legal position as anybody could guess. The public authorities are supposed to implement law of the land and they cannot afford to be ignorant of that law which they are supposed to know and implement. How can an ignorant person implement the law for which he has been assigned the job”.
Stating that not only among public authorities the Government has also failed to adhere to the provisions vis-à-vis creating awareness among the common masses as how to exercise the rights contemplated under the Act, sources said, “this is leading to mis-utilization of Act by certain persons”.
While dealing with this aspect in his recent judgment, the CIC has observed, “the RTI Act has been introduced with the purpose of bringing transparency and accountability and only that information is to be sought which is defined in Section 2 of the J&K RTI Act, 2009”, adding “the RTI should not be used as a tool of pressurizing the Government officers and keeping them engaged in replying to voluminous details of information”.
“The Supreme Court has rightly observed that 70% time of the Government officers should not be required to be spent only in replying to the queries in the garb of RTI Act”, the CIC said.
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