Right to [dis]informationDecember 7th, 2010

Right to [dis]informationDecember 7th, 2010
DC Correspondent

Chennai, Dec. 6: Right to Information (RTI) activists in Tamil Nadu face several hurdles in getting information from public information officers in government offices and what is worse is that three information commissioner posts are lying vacant despite the large backlog of RTI applications.

With the death of commissioner T.R. Ramasamy, the commission now has only three commissioners, Mr R. Perumalsamy, Mr T. Srinivasan and Ms Sarada Nambi Arooran led by state chief information commissioner K. S. Sripathy.

Of the sanctioned 10 posts of information commissioners, only five have been filled since the creation of the commission.

Mr N.R. Mohanram, a Salem-based RTI activist, said the Tamil Nadu state information commission was one of the badly run information commissions in the country. The TN commission does not implement several orders issued by the Union government and Central information commission.

“The TN information commission takes six to nine months to take up a petition for hearing. Such is the way of the commission. With the increasing pendency of cases, the work burden of the commissioners goes up and it would affect their performance,” he said.

The RTI commission functions on the first floor of Kamadhenu supermarket in Teynampet with very little space for officers and petitioners, besides minimum storage space for preserving records.

Mr A. Devaneyan, another RTI activist, said the commission lacks basic infrastructure including adequate space for petitioners to be seated. “There is no proper space for petitioners and public information officers to wait to attend the hearing. We have to stand inside the office, which makes it difficult for the commission staff to move inside the office. Petitioners have to wait outside or move around the office till their appeal is heard,” he said.

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More disorder than order

Chennai, Dec. 6: RTI activists in the state complain that most of the state information commissioners violate the Right to Information Act by pronouncing misleading orders.

Mr B. Ramesh, an advocate who has been filing RTIs for a long time, said most of the orders delivered by state information commissioners violate the RTI Act.

There is no provision in the RTI Act for limiting the number of questions but the commissioners, without reading the Act, direct petitioners to restrict the number of questions.

“In most cases, commissioners do not summon the petitioner and the public information officer but direct the petitioner not to ask more questions, which violates the Act. Nobody knows how the commissioners take up cases for hearing. Some cases are heard six months to one year later but some other cases are taken up for hearing within a month,” he said.

RTI activist Arul Doss said, “I received eight letters from the commission describing my questions as ones which hamper the functioning of the public authority. I wanted to know how much the state government has allotted for the urban housing department and how much has been spent for development of the poor in the state. I don’t know how these questions will hinder the functioning of the PIO and the commissioners support PIOs by not providing the details,” he said.

with inputs from PRAMILA KRISHNAN

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Distance keeps info out of reach

Chennai, Dec. 6: Even a year after the installation of video-conferencing facility at the Tamil Nadu state information commission (TNSIC), the facility was not put to use causing severe hardship to applicants from the southern districts.

The facility was installed by the Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT) at a cost of `15 lakh at the commission’s head office. The facility will be interlinked with the existing video-conferencing facility in other district headquarters.

Video-conferencing would come in handy for applicants from Kanyakumari, Tirunelveli, Ooty and other distant places. Not only the applicants, even the information commissioners need not travel to the districts to hear the petitions.

The Central information commission in New Delhi has for more than three years been hearing cases from across India with the help of video-conferencing.

Vellore RTI activist M. Sivaraj said the proposal to instal video-conferencing facility was a very good one.

Unfortunately, the state government was not cooperating. When Mr S. Ramakrishnan was chief information commissioner, he prepared the proposal. But it now remains only on paper, he said.

He alleged that the state government did not want to implement these progressive projects because they do not want to implement the RTI Act in letter and spirit.

City-based RTI activist V. Madhav said, “The video-conferencing system was placed with much fanfare but it is not utilised. Petitioners from distant places are forced to come to Chennai to appear for the hearing. The video-conferencing system should be put to use as soon as possible in order to help the petitioners.”

Information commissioners who travel to various districts to hear petitions claim travel expenses, Mr V. Gopalakrishnan, an RTI activist explained, adding that the TNSIC should make use of the facility to speed up disposal of petitions.

Attempts to contact state chief information commissioner K. Sripathi proved futile