Category: Right to Information (RTI)

Do you know how to file an RTI plea?

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How to file an RTI plea

The Act prescribes a simple procedure to obtain information. Though some public authorities have their own formats, there is no compulsion to stick to the prescribed format

Step 1: Identify the department you want information from. Some subjects fall under the purview of State governments or local authority such as the municipal administration/panchayat, while others are handled by the Central government

Step 2: On a sheet of white paper, write out the application by hand, or type it, in English, Hindi or the official language of the area. You can also ask the public information officer to put it in writing

Step 3: Address the application to the State/Central Public Information Officer. Write the name of the office from which you seek information, and the complete, correct address. Clearly mention ‘Seeking information under the RTI Act, 2005’ in your subject line

Step 4: State your request in the form of specific, detailed questions, and mention the period/year your request falls into. Ask for documents or extracts of documents, if required. To obtain documents, the applicant has to make a payment of Rs. 2 per page

Step 5: Pay Rs. 10 to file the plea. This can be done in the form of cash, money order, bank draft or a court fee stamp. The stamp should be affixed to the application. Applicants below the poverty line (BPL) need not make the payment but have to attach a copy of the BPL certificate along with the application

Step 6: Provide your full name and address, contact details, email address and sign the application clearly. Put in the date and the name of your town

Step 7: Take a photocopy of the application and keep one with you for future reference. Send your application by post or hand it in personally to the department concerned. Don’t forget to get an acknowledgement

Step 8: The law mandates that information be provided in 30 days. If this does not happen, you can file an appeal. The first appeal should be addressed to ‘The Appellate Authority’ with the name of the department and the address. The appellate authority is mandated to revert in 30 days from the date of receipt of the appeal. If the Appellate authority fails to reply, further appeals lie with the Information Commission, the Chief Information Commissioner, State/Central Information Commission

Compiled by Zubeda Hamid; graphics by Satwik Gade

Click Here to read more of this article

Can’t find the missing file? Go, reconstruct it!

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VINITA DESHMUKH – Information Commissioners usually ask PIOs to lodge an FIR in the police station in case a file goes missing. In one case under the RTI, the CIC asked the PIO to ‘reconstruct’ the missing file to facilitate justice to a doctor allegedly involved in a criminal case

When Jugal Kishore, a Delhi resident asked for the file pertaining to a show cause notice of one Dr Prashant Kumar of Lok Nayak Hospital, he was denied information by the Public Information Officer (PIO) stating that the file was ‘missing’. When Kishore went in for an appeal, the First Appellate Authority (FAA) ignored his request. He then filed asecond appeal to the Central Information Commissioner (CIC).
The CIC ordered the PIO and FAA to search for the ‘missing’ file and lodge a first information report (FIR) at the police station about the missing file. Two years went by and yet the file could not be found and FIR was also not lodged. Considering that Dr Kumar’s fate lay in the finding of that file, CIC M Sridhar Acharyulu in a historic decision asked the hospital to ‘reconstruct’ the missing file in February 2014.
The CIC stated, “Earlier, the Commission did not direct the Respondent to recreate the file. Since the Commission found that Respondent Authority was not successful in tracingthe file, it is necessary in the interest of providing required information by the Appellant, which might help him prove the innocence of Dr Prashant Kumar, directs the PIO to collect the information from different sources to reconstruct the file of Dr Prashant Kumar as far as possible. The Appellant too offered to cooperate with the PIO in reconstructing the necessary documents to prepare the file of Dr Prashant Kumar.”
Following is the chronology of this interesting RTI case as projected in theCIC order of 24 February 2014.

  • Kishore filed an RTI application dt.9.4.12 with the PIO, Lok Nayak Hospital (under Section 7 of the RTI Act) seeking information against nine points with regard to show cause notice issued to Dr Prashant Kumar He had also filed another RTI application regarding payments made to Dr Kumar
  • On not receiving any reply for both his applications he filed an appeal the Appellate Authority reiterating his request for information
  • The Appellant, Kishore, made a second appeal stating that PIO has made it a standard practice to say records are not available and FAA has made it a practice not to respond or give any hearing.
  • During the hearing, Dr Deepak Kumar Singh, Respondent Officer submitted that records pertaining to Dr Prashant Kumar are not available. Kishore submitted that since Dr Prashant is in prison, he is seeking information on behalf of Dr Prashant Kumar.
  • Kishore submitted that CIC had ordered the Appellate Authority to conduct an enquiry u/s 18(2) of the RTI Act into the whereabouts of the missing personal file of Dr Prashant Kumar. The relevant portion of the order had stated: “…the Commission believes that it will be in the interest of the appellant to remand the case back to the First Appellate Authority with a direction that he/ she conduct an enquiry as per provisions u/s 18(2) of the RTI Act into the whereabouts of the missing personal file of Dr Prashant Kumar, fix the responsibility and take appropriate action against the official found guilty of having misplaced the file. The enquiry report as also the report on action taken based on the outcome of the enquiry to be shared with the Appellant within four weeks of receipt of this order. An FIR too may be lodged with the police about the missing file once it is confirmed that the file remains untraceable. A copy of the FIR may be shared with the Appellant.” However, the hospital did not comply by the order”.
  • The FAA informed the Commission that she had directed Dr Manju Mehra, AMS (Admn) to file an FIR. Dr Manju Mehra, AMS (Admn) informed the Commission that she had not filed the FIR with the police, since she felt that once the enquiry is over the filecan be reconstructed.
  • Since the AMS (Admin) has given the reason for not lodging the FIR, the Commission directed that now that the enquiry has been conducted and enquiry report shared with the Appellant, the FIR may be lodged as directed by the Commission with the concerned branch of Delhi Police and copy of FIR share with the Appellant which was done.
  • All through Kishore reiterated that Dr Prashant Kumar was implicated in a criminal caseand when he sought details of information from personal file of Dr Prashant Kumar which was not made available to him since 2012. The CIC order states, “He filed series of RTI applications and the matter came before Information Commissioner in 2012. The Respondent Authority did not comply with the directions of the Commission. The Appellant filed a non-compliance petition and Commission took a very serious objection and warned the Respondent with serious action considering that as willful violation of law. The Appellant pleaded that this information would help him to prove the innocence of Dr Prashant Kumar in a criminal case implicated by certain persons in the Public Authority. The Appellant also cited fact of missing file and non-compliance of CIC orders as indicators of biased action against Dr Prashant Kumar.”

 

CIC concluded in its order, “This case assumes very serious propositions and it affects the liberty of Dr Prashant Kumar who is totally depending on the discovery of missed file. There is a delay of more than two years in either tracing the file or fixing up the responsibility. The so-called enquiry conducted did not yield any result.  Hence, the Commission is compelled to recommend that the Minister for Health and Family Welfare, Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD) to conduct an independent enquiry without involving officers of Respondent Public Authority and giving an opportunity to Appellant to provide his allegations against some of the officers of Public Authority and to provide innocence of Dr Prashant Kumar. The entire exercise is to be completed within two months of receipt of this order. A copy of the enquiry report along with the action taken shall be shared with the Appellant and the Commission within two weeks of completion of the exercise.”

 

The deadline for the enquiry report to be submitted to CIC is April.

 

Earlier, in a similar case, Shailesh Gandhi, the then Central Information Commissioner, on 29 July 2009 had directed the PIO to give a copy of the reconstructed file created by using papers and communications received by the appellant.

 

(Vinita Deshmukh is consulting editor of Moneylife, an RTI activist and convener of the Pune Metro Jagruti Abhiyaan. She is the recipient of prestigious awards like the Statesman Award for Rural Reporting which she won twice in 1998 and 2005 and the Chameli Devi Jain award for outstanding media person for her investigation series on Dow Chemicals. She co-authored the book “To The Last Bullet – The Inspiring Story of A Braveheart – Ashok Kamte” with Vinita Kamte and is the author of “The Mighty Fall”.)

http://www.moneylife.in/article/cant-find-the-%20missing-file-go-reconstruct-it/36921.html

 

RTI e-resources

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Yashwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration (YASHADA) is the Administrative Training Institute of the Government of Maharashtra, and meets the training needs of government departments and rural and urban non-officials and stakeholders.

They have now started an RTI Section  on their website the the following links :

 

RTI e-Library

RTI Act RTI Rules Judgements
Guidelines Handbooks Reference Material

Please Click Here to visit their website for further interesting and uptodate information

Civic Action Toolkit

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Recently, We, the People has come out with a very interesting Civic Action Toolkit which explains the following to the layman in the context of making him a daily citizen. It is an attempt to simplify the steps which equip us with tools to make the system work and how to reclaim our space as citizens :

  1. Identify the Issue
  2. Identify the Legal background
  3. Who are the authorities related to the issue at hand
  4. Gathering maximum information related to the issue
  5. How to approach when the laws and rules do not address the problem
  6. Public Action
  7. RTI Formats

Click Here for the Civic Action Toolkit

We, the People is a network of organisations and individuals. We facilitate exploration, understanding and action for being active and responsible citizens through events and in-depth training programmes. Our programmes are offered in schools, slums, skyscrapers — anywhere that citizens of this nation live, learn and work. 

For more information, please contact:
Rama Shyam +91- 9320191300

info@we-the-people.in

www.we-the-people.in

www.facebook.com/WeThePeople

Courtesy : Jeby Patel

Political Parties come under RTI ambit

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In a major victory to democracy, the Central Information Commission on 3rd June has ordered all political parties not only to designate PIOs and AAs within six weeks but also to abide by voluntary disclosures under Section 4 of the RTI Act

It took Right to Information (RTI) activists SubhasChandra Aggarwal and Anil Bahirwal, the national coordinator of National Election Watch and Association for Democratic Reforms, a good three years to collect incriminating evidence and tenaciously follow it up to prove that all political parties are public authorities. This fact was consistently resisted by spokespersons of the big political parties—Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Samajwadi Party (SP), Bahujan Samaj Party BSP as well as Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). The duo’s commendable efforts finally resulted in the Central Information Commission (CIC)delivering a landmark judgment on 3June 2013.

“Political parties have long resisted opening themselves to public scrutiny. People have long been demanding that there should be complete transparency in their financial and internal functioning. Various commissions including the Law Commission, Election Commission and NCRCW have already recommended that political parties should demonstrate transparency through various measures. The CIC should be immensely complimented for passing this landmark judgement to enable the citizens of India so that they can access information about the political parties for which they vote for.”

Click Here for the full story on this landmark judgement which is being opposed by all political parties.

RTI application through designated post office

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You can file RTI application through designated post office as well

In case you are filing your RTI application to any of the central government departments, just head to the designated Post Office where the central assistant Public Information Officer (CAPIO) is duty bound to not only accept but also help you out in filing the application

Recently, I filed a Right to Information (RTI) application to the union home ministry and the central public works department (CPWD) to get information on the new post-retirement home of Pratibha Patil (after she abandoned her palatial one which was on 2.6 lakh odd sq ft on prime defence land at Khadki in Pune, after a series of articles in Moneylife. Her new one is a modest one – an existing government bungalow of around 2,500 sq ft, which is being refurbished. Apparently, though, it has been extended to 6,000 sq ft as per newspaper reports. I wanted to have details of that through RTI, which I am still awaiting.

 

Instead of sending my RTI application through courier by attaching the Indian Postal Order (IPO), (last time I had quite stupidly made a DD of Rs10, which cost me Rs35 to make it, when I had sent my RTI to the Rashtrapati Bhavan). Therefore, this time I decided to try out the Post Office.

 

I headed for the Pune General Post Office (GPO). Remember that you may not be able to file your RTI in each post office. You need to ask the post office headquarters of your village/ town/ city to find out in which branch the assistant central public information officer (ACPIO) has been designated under the RTI Act. The Department of Post (DoP) has designated around 4,707 ACPIOs across the country as of 30 June 2011.The numbers may have increased by now.

 Click Here for more details

Making the Right to Information a Reality

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More than 90 countries around the world have laws guaranteeing the right to information. But getting an information law on the books is only the beginning. Making sure that public information actually reaches ordinary citizens is a challenge of its own.

In the first three years after India passed its 2005 Right to Information Act, there were over two million requests. Even with a network of information commissioners in place to facilitate applications, the system was facing crushing backlogs. Shailesh Gandhi, a Central Information Commissioner in New Delhi, set out to create a new approach to keep cases moving.

Learn more about Open Society’s work on freedom of information at http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org

Information that cannot be denied to Parliament cannot be denied to citizens

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Does this provision in Section 8 wherein, despite exemptions you have the right to information if it is of larger public interest being correctly interpreted by Courts? A study thinks otherwise

Notwithstanding Section 8 of the Right to Information (RTI) Act under which you are denied the right to certain information, there is a provision which states that, every citizen has the right to get that information which our elected representatives, have access to. It reads thus, “Provided that the information which cannot be denied to the Parliament or a State Legislature shall not be denied to any person.”

 

However, it has been observed in an expert study, conducted by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) that the judiciary has been inconsistent in application of this provision and therefore “does not provide clarity of interpretation of this crucial provision of the RTI Act.’’

 

Sometimes, the judiciary applies it to the entire Section 8 (1) which should be the case according to the CHRI’s analysis but many a time in its judgment, the judiciary restricts this provision only to Section 8 (1)(j) which relates to protection of personal information. Such varied interpretation which is diluting the power of this provision says the study, would have adverse repercussions for citizens, if this trend continues in the court of law.

 Click Here for the full story by Vinita Deshmukh at MoneyLife

 

Model RTI township

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All information and working of Ashrafpur Kichaucha of Ambedkar Nagar District of UP is available at www.npakmakdoom.com This is an initiative of Alok Kumar Singh EO of the local town committee of this small town of less than 16000. He has done this with no extra budget since 2008! My salute to Alok, who has set an example for the entire Country!

Courtesy : Shailesh Gandhi

With three computers and a scanner, UP town is an open book – Click Here for the Indian Express Report