The state government on Friday submitted to the Gujarat High Court that an online platform for Right to Information (RTI) applications and information dissemination will be up and running by March 2020. The submission came in response to a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by Sandip Munjyasara, a cyber-security expert, seeking the court’s direction to the state government for developing an online portal for RTI, a feat already achieved by the union and several state governments.
As per an affidavit filed by state general administration department’s under-secretary, Nilkanth Pandya, the state government has already issued the work order to Hewlett Packard Enterprise for the design, development, implementation, and maintenance of Integrated Workflow and Document Management System. Pandya has submitted that the work entrusted to the company includes the responsibility of RTI Management and it is supposed to complete the work by March 2020.
The affidavit provides that rollout of the application will be initiated by the state government in a phased manner. Initially, it will be implemented in secretariat, followed by heads of departments, board, corporations, and institutes. Thereafter, the system will be implemented in district offices, followed by taluka offices, and gram panchayats.
According to the petitioner, a person seeking information under the RTI Act in Gujarat has to make a physical application and cannot do so through any electronic means. Also, the applicant will have to obtain a postal order by visiting the post office and paying the requisite fee for such an application. Then the applicant is supposed to send the physical application to the department. It is Munjyasara’s contention that RTI Act has mandated every public authority to maintain the data in electronic form, but Gujarat government has not set-up RTI portal.
After the success of the portal, the Centre asked chief secretaries of all states to explore similar portals in their respective states. However, the Gujarat government did not implement the same.
Munjyasara told DNA that all institutions under the definition of ‘public authority’ are supposed to send a quarterly report of RTI applications received and disposed to the State Information Commission. However, in the absence of an online platform for RTI, such reports are seldom sent.
THE PORTAL
- After the Act came into force in 2005, union government in 2013 developed the RTI online portal through which citizens can seek information from the Centre
- Portal provides the facility to the applicants to pay the application fee online and has greatly simplified the process
