RIGHT TO INFORMATION - 2009 - Indian Social Institute

under the Act. Ram Mehar has complained to the State Information Commission (SIC) and asked for
refund of the money and the correct information. He has approached some NGOs as well, including the
Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) and Sanjha Kadam. Talking to The Indian Express,
Ram Mehar said he had asked for details of the income and expenditure of the Mehda village panchayat
fund accounts and other schemes, such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, for the
period from April 2005 to October 2008. “The sarpanch, Manjit Kaur, who is guided by her husband
Surender Singh, got a resolution passed in the proceeding book of the Gram Panchayat in November that
the information sought by me contained as many as 5222 pages and, at the rate of Rs 10 per page for the
information, I was required to pay Rs 52,220,” he said. Being unaware of the RTI rule that after 30 days,
he was supposed to get the information free of cost, he paid the entire amount on December 16, 2008
and was asked to collect the information after seven days, which he failed to get. After he reported the
matter to the BDPO, Dadri II, on December 22, he was handed bundles of papers on January 15 “in the
name of information”. “It (the bundle of papers) contained 800 pages of BPL application forms of the
villages, 800 applications for a job card under NREGA, vouchers, quotations, several receipts that were
more than 2500 pages, 505 pages of panchayat proceedings, apart from other papers that had no
relevance,” he rued. Condemning the sarpanch’s action, Ajit Tomar, a social activist from the region, said
the sarpanch should be punished under the provision of the RTI Act, 2005 and the amount of Rs 52,220
must be returned to Ram Mehar immediately. (Indian Express 9/3/09)
'Pending cases biggest threat to RTI' (1)
MUMBAI: Central information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi on Sunday said that the three-and-a-half
year old Right to information (RTI) Act has given the average citizen some hope in providing better
governance, compared to the long-drawn legal system in the country. Gandhi, in his earlier avatar as a
city-based RTI activist, had used the Act to expose some of the major loopholes in the state bureaucracybe
it examining the arbitrary disbursal of the chief minister's relief fund or procuring the medical report of
convicted state minister Swarup Singh Naik who got admitted to the air-conditioned ward of JJ hospital to
escape a one-month prison term. "I feel today the greatest threat to the survival of the RTI Act is the
mounting pendency of appeals. If the applicants are not provided correct information within the stipulated
period, then they will lose faith in the Act,'' Gandhi said during an interaction with senior officials with the
state information commission and RTI activists at Wadala. State chief information commissioner Suresh
Joshi, while lauding Gandhi's efforts of clearing over 2,300 appeals in five months, said that Gandhi is
truly the Sachin Tendulkar of the RTI movement. "But the SIC has now caught up with this zeal. The
pendency in Mumbai has now come down to around three months,'' Joshi said. TOI had last week done
an analysis on the performance of various commissioners and found that Shailesh Gandhi and
Annapurna Dixit topped in the number of disposals per month. Gandhi, for instance, has heard 670
appeals in January this year while Dixit disposed of 330 appeals in the same period. The CIC has a
pending appeals of around 10,000 while the SIC's pendency figures is over 15,000 till date. The state has
a higher number of pending appeals because Maharashtra also receives the highest number of RTI
applications in the world, Joshi said. RTI activist Bhaskar Prabhu-while welcoming the state information
commissioner's assurance of speedy disposal-said that each commissioner should dispose at least two
appeals every day to clear the current backlog. "We will take up the pendency issue with the governor
soon,'' RTI activist S K Nangia said. Gandhi said that though he was facing a staff crunch, he has
managed to dispose around 500 appeals every month as he has recruited computer-savvy volunteers.
"About 70% of my salary goes towards the honorary payment of these volunteers,'' Gandhi said. He said
that it is sad that many babus at the government offices still cannot operate a computer. "In my short
exposure to the working of the government, I have realised that there is a systemic problem in our
bureaucracy. Only if citizens and media come forward and challenge this rot on a daily basis will there will
be any effective change,'' he said. (Times of India 9/3/09)
Under draft J&K RTI law, Indians outside state can't access info (1)
NEW DELHI: The draft Jammu and Kashmir Right to Information bill, likely to be tabled in the state
legislative council this week, has some key anomalies, say RTI activists. The bill was cleared by the
legislative assembly on Monday. According to the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), the
draft bill does not allow Indian citizens living outside J&K access to information on public agencies within
the state. Incidentally, J&K residents can use the central Act to get information on central ministries but
the central legislation is not applicable in the state. Another issue that CHRI has raised but was ignored