Three of Pune’s practices under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005 will act as role models for the country.
Three of Pune’s practices under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005 will act as role models for the country. This was decided in the recently concluded chief information commissioner’s (CIC) conference in New Delhi.
Special appeal disposal programme, open days at government offices and the unique RTI library at the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) are the three practices, which will be exemplified as role models for the country along with a host of other practices from other states.
The conference, an annual event, is attended by the CICs, RTI activists and legal experts across the country.
During the conference, the CICs make presentations about methods adopted by them in their states for proper implementations of RTI and to reduce the pendency of second appeals.
Pune bench’s state information commissioner (SIC) Vijay Kuvalekar, who holds the additional charge of CIC for the state, during his presentation spoke about the special appeal disposal programmes held and the open days initiated at the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) and Sangli Miraj Kupwad Municipal Corporation (SMKMC) and the revenue department of the Pune district collectorate. City-based RTI activist Vijay Kumbhar made a presentation about the RTI library opened at the PMC.
The special appeal disposal programme works initiated by Kuvalekar has similarities with the functioning of Lok Adalats. Like the Lok Adalats, the applicant, the public information officer and the first appellate authority meet to solve the appeal with mutual consent. Around 1,800 appeals were disposed off in a period of 9 months under this programme, which was held in five districts under Pune commissionerate.
After Kumbhar’s presentation about the RTI library in the PMC, the CIC of Bihar had expressed his willingness to emulate the same in Bihar. Kumbhar would be sending a detailed report to the CIC of Bihar within the next few days.
Under the open days in PMC and SMKMC, and the revenue department of the district collectorate, the general public is allowed access to all the files in the office on a particular day for a fixed amount of time. Thanks to this, experiment, the number of RTI applications and the second appeals have gone down drastically for the departments.
Following these and other presentations that followed, it was decided that the above three experiments along with some others would be included in the list of best practices drawn up at the end. These practices would be popularised across the country for information commissioners to follow.
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