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Thursday, January 12, 2006

Sarbajit and his multicoloured RTI raincoat

Sarbajit Roy gets results on opening day :-)

First proceeding under RTI Act
Manoj Mitta
[ Saturday, December 24, 2005 01:55:08 am TIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

NEW DELHI: The first ever quasi judicial proceedings under the Right to Information Act 2005 kicked off on a propitious note as a public authority readily agreed to mend its ways and give information to citizens without asking questions.

The Delhi Development Authority (DDA), represented by its vice-chairman Dinesh Rai, told the Central Information Commission (CIC) that it would shortly revise the format of its existing application form to bring it in line with the RTI Act, so that no citizen has to give any explanation for why he is seeking information.

In another far-reaching reform, the DDA said that each of its 40 public information officers would, in keeping with the RTI Act, be directed to accept any application for information regardless of whether the subject pertained to him or not.

The CIC also forced the DDA to admit that its website does not comply with the RTI mandate of making a pro-active disclosure in form of 17 manuals on different aspects of the organisation.

The concessions wrested from the DDA at its very first hearing may help the two-month-old CIC establish its credentials as the independent appellate body envisaged by the RTI Act.

It is still too early to say whether the CIC packed with ex-babus really has the will to thwart the covert and not so covert attempts by the bureaucracy to hide information from citizens.

In keeping with its stated policy of transparency, the CIC took the unusual step of allowing TV cameras to capture the proceedings in the face of objections from DDA officials.

At the end of a two-hour public hearing, the CIC gave a fortnight to the DDA to explain why it had withheld from an applicant, Sarbajit Roy, the public feedback on the proposed Master Plan for Delhi-2021.

The first hearing, however, had its share of teething problems. For one, the room available with the CIC to hold its public hearings turned out to be too small.

In fact, the CIC, currently housed in the old campus of JNU, has already put out an advertisement to lease a larger and more centrally located premises.

The CIC also admitted that it should not have in the very instance summoned the head of the DDA. It is likely that for future hearings, the CIC will summon only the public information officer of the department concerned to respond to the grievances of the applican

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