The government has notified a new set of rules for moving the Central
Information Commission (CIC) against government departments, laying down
the basic standards that the appeal will have to meet to be taken up.
The new rules were notified by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) at the request of the CIC that was grappling with incoherent and incomplete appeals.
Chief Information Commissioner Satyananda Mishra said the commission
had not insisted on a format or content of an appeal in the initial
phase since the implementation of the law was still in its infancy.
“But now that the number of RTI appeals has gone up, it has become
extremely difficult for us to cope with incomplete, and sometimes
illegible appeals,” Mishra told Hindustan Times.
In the past, the CIC has accepted letters written to the commission
as formal appeals and got around to putting together the necessary
paperwork at its own initiative.
With nearly a million RTI applications filed annually, the proportion
of appeals has also increased considerably. As the CIC, Mishra has
about 1,233 pending appeals to deal with.
As a result of the backlog, a denial of information appeal would have
to wait for about 8 to 12 months before the information commissioner
can take up the case.
The new rules – notified on 31 July but yet not put in public domain
by DoPT – not only lists the documents that would need to accompany an
appeal but also lays down a format for the applications.
Deviation from the format would not be a ground for rejecting an appeal to ensure that the poor were not discriminated against.
But for the rest, “I think it is only fair to expect people to cooperate with us”.
But for the rest, “I think it is only fair to expect people to cooperate with us”.
Source: http://www.hindustantimes.com
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