CASA’s Memorandum to Governor Orissa for removing the bottlenecks in the process of operationalisation of RTI Act 2005 in the State

To

The Governor, Orissa, Raj Bhavan, Bhubaneswar

Sir,

 1) As you know, the historic legislation called Right to Information Act 2005 was enacted on 15th of June 2005 and came into full force on 12th of October 2005 in Orissa and elsewhere in the country except of course the State of Jammu and Kashmir. Thus more than a year has already elapsed since the Act had commenced and it was hoped that the Government of Orissa along with the State Information Commission would do their utmost to ensure its effective operationalisation across the State 

2) On behalf of Orissa Branch of CASA ( Church’s Auxiliary for Social Action) and FOARD ( Farmers Organisation for Agriculture and Rural Development), two training-cum-workshops on RTI Act 2005 have been held in recent past i.e. the first one on 26-28 July 06 and the second one on 23-25 August 06 involving its partner NGOs, SHGs, PRI leaders, Women Groups and farmers’ representatives at its Banamalipur Resource Centre located under Balipatana Block in Khurda district of Orissa.

3) The agenda of each Workshop included a sample visit by the groups of participants to the offices of selected public authorities under State Government of Orissa located in and around Balipatana under Khurda district for inspecting and accessing instant information as permissible under Section 4 of the RTI Act 2005 and Rule 2 of Orissa RTI (Amendment) Rules 2006. Each group of visitors went to the concerned offices being equipped with a set of questions so as to know the facts relating to them from their respective heads by way of inspection or otherwise.

4) Besides the specific questions relevant to the office concerned, each group had raised the following common questions before every public authority they visited:

i)          What measures the public authority has taken so far in compliance to the obligation entrusted to them under Item (xv) of Section 4(1b) of RTI Act 2005, i.e. “the particulars of facilities available to citizens for obtaining information, including the working hours of a library or reading room, if maintained for public use”.

ii)         Whether the PIO of the concerned office maintain the two Registers as mentioned under Rule 2 of Orissa RTI (Amendment) Rules 2006, namely (1 ) the Register to be maintained in Form F “for recording the details of the applications received and the information supplied by him”, “which shall remain always open to inspection by the members of the public as required in respect of the proactive disclosures under Section 4(1b) of the Act”, and (2) the Register to be maintained “for day-to-day record of the members of public who visit its office in connection with accessing or inspecting suo moto information proactively disclosed by the said authority under Section 4 of the Act.” 

5) After the groups visited the public offices, they sat down and shared their experiences among them. It was noticed that all the groups had some common experience on how the public authorities in Balipatana area were implementing the RTI Act in their respective spheres. Since most of the public authorities visited by the above groups were found to be utterly negligent in regard to its implementation, it was thought prudent to bring those eye-witness findings to your kind notice with the hope that you shall take immediate and appropriate measures to remedy them. The following were the common observations made by the visiting groups on the state of affairs relating to implementation of RTI Act by the public authorities in Balipatana area. 

a)    No Government Office was found to maintain the two registers as required under Rule 2 of Orissa RTI (Amendment) Rules 2006. Even most of such offices were not at all aware about their statutory obligation to maintain such registers.

b)    As per Item (xvi) under Section 4(1b) of RTI Act 2005, every Government office should publicise “the names, designations and other particulars of the Public Information Officers”, and as per Section 4(3), “For the purposes of sub-section (1), every information shall be disseminated widely and in such form and manner which is accessible to the public.” But it was found that no public authority has put in place the display of such information in the form of a hoarding or wall-writing in front of its office so far, and as a result the members of the public find it extremely difficult to know who are the PIO or APIO or Appellate Authority of the concerned office and whom to approach for the purpose of accessing or inspecting the information they want.

c)     The opening words of Section 4(1b) of RTI Act say that each public authority should proactively publicise 17 categories of suo moto information within 120 days of the commencement of this Act i.e. by 12th of October 2005. Meanwhile more than a year has elapsed since the RTI Act had commenced i.e. on 15th of June 2005. But till date no office of any public authority has attempted the arrangement of its stock of information as per the abovementioned list of categories for dissemination to the intending members of the public. As a result, the members of public when they visit an office for seeking information falling under any of such categories, the concerned officers are not able to comply with such request of theirs.

d)    As per the Explanation to Section 4 of the RTI Act, the members of the public have a right to inspect any public office for seeking out information falling under any of the above mentioned 17 categories of proactive disclosures made by a public authority. And it is obvious that a person needn’t have to submit any written application along with an application fee as required under Section 6(1) of the Act to access the information falling under the suo moto categories of Section 4(1b). Moreover, a requestor for information under Section 4 needn’t have to wait upto 30 days for getting the information he or she wants, since proactively disclosed information owing to their very nature are supposed to be made available to the members of the public instantly. And above all, since the Orissa RTI Rules 2005 along with its Amendment of 2006 has not prescribed any fee against the supply of information falling under Section 4(4) [ vide Definition of Fee mentioned under Rule 2 (c ) of Orissa RTI Rules 2005], the sub-section (4) under Section 4 make it mandatory on the part of each public authority under State Government of Orissa to provide such suo moto information to the members of the public free of cost. But the officers who happened to interact with the visiting groups told that they were neither aware nor imparted any training about such provisions.  

e)     As per the Item (xv) under Section 4(1b), every public authority should provide for minimum facilities like reading room and sitting arrangements etc. to enable a citizen to access or inspect information in the category of Section 4(1b) easily and comfortably. The Rule 2 under Orissa RTI (Amendment) Rules 2006 does also contain a provision in the same vein. But no public authority has so far arranged any such facility within their premise and as a result the members of the public visiting an office are perforce kept standing while the concerned officer would be talking to them from a seated position in his/her chair.

f)      As per Section 5(2) of RTI Act read with Section 18(1), it is the job of the concerned PIO or APIO of a public authority to receive the complaint or appeal under the Act for forwarding the same to the 1st Appellate Authority or Information Commission as the case may be. But when the visiting groups wanted to make a direct complaint under Section 18(1) of the Act before the Information Commission, the concerned officers in the public authorities they visited, refused to forward the same. They frankly told that they were neither aware nor trained about such a provision existing in the RTI Act 2005.

g)    As you know, as per the Orissa RTI Rules 2005, an applicant for information shall have to deposit the application fee either through treasury challan or through cash. Such a highly restricted provision in respect of the mode of payment is a great stumbling block before the people for exercising their right to apply for information under the Act. A person living in a remote, interior village has to travel all the way spending his/her money, time and energy from his/her place of residence to an urban or semi-urban area where the Government treasury might be located, just to remit an application fee of Rs.10/-. Or alternatively, he/she has to come all the way physically in person from his/her place of residence to the office of the concerned public authority to whom he/she wants to submit the application for information, just to deposit a cash of Rs.10/- only towards the application fee. Moreover, as you know, the RTI Act entitles a man from any part of the country to apply for information to the public authorities located anywhere else in the land. But the Orissa RTI Rules as it stands today, in stead of acting as enabling provisions for realizing such a perspective, has become an insuperable hindrance against the same. Is it possible for a man, say for instance, sitting in Delhi to come physically to an office located in Orissa just to submit his application fee of Rs.10/- by cash. Alternatively, how come that man of Delhi, if he ever prefers to remit his application fee through treasury challan, would get the treasury challan of Govt of Orissa? In some other States, such variety of modes of payment as Banker’s Cheque, Money Order and Postal Order have been provided for under their respective State RTI Rules, and as a result a citizen sitting in any far-off corner can send his application along with the application fee by post to any public authority in the State without any hassle. It is therefore legitimate to apprehend that so long the Orissa RTI Rules limits the mode of payment of application fee to only cash and treasury challan, a vast bulk of population both within and outside the State would ever remain circumstantially deprived of their right to submit an application under the Act, let alone receive the information applied for. 

The next intractable snag that has surfaced owing to the absurd nature of Orissa RTI Rules is the provision for single mode of payment i.e. only by cash  towards the cost of information supplied under Section 7(5) of the Act. The Rule 4(2), Form-B and Schedule-1 of the Orissa RTI Rules categorically say that an applicant has to pay the cost of information by cash only to the PIO concerned, not by any other mode such as Money Order, Cheque or Postal Order etc. Keeping the former instance in view, let us assume that the applicant from Delhi is notified in Form-B by the PIO from Orissa to pay, say for instance, a total of Rs.50/- towards the cost of information. The question arises, how can he pay this amount to the PIO before the information is posted to him? As per the Orissa Rules, there is no other way of remitting the amount of Rs.50/- except by personally visiting the concerned office and handing over the amount in cash to the PIO concerned. Is it a feasible proposition? While other RTI Rules of other States have provided for a variety of modes of payment for meeting the cost of information, there is no earthly reason as to why the Orissa Rules restricts it to a single cash mode only. 

h)    Another reason for de-motivation of the common people of Orissa from applying under the RTI Act 05 is the very ultra vires nature of the Application Form i.e. Form A prescribed thereunder. Everybody knows that as per Section 6(2) of the Act, “An applicant for information shall not be required to give any reason for requesting the information or any other personal details except those that may be necessary for contacting him.” But Orissa’s Form-A which contains a tall list of 11 columns to be filled up by an applicant asks for such personal details as Father/Spouse (Col.2), Permanent Address (Col.3) and Particulars in respect of identity of the applicant (Col.4). And      further, the Rule 2 (e) defines ‘identity’ as ‘an evidence to show the citizenship like an electoral photo identity card, a passport or any other document which can satisfy the authority about the citizenship of the person’. It is easily surmisable that when an applicant provides these information   which are obviously personal in nature, and moreover if the information asked for is of a sensitive nature, then he or she remains always struck with a legitimate apprehension that the concerned office or some vested interest group in league with the same office, might use such personal details to do some violence against him/her or his/her family members. Thus the provision of Orissa RTI Rules for asking for personal information in the Application Form is not only ultra vires the mother law, but also fraught with ominous consequences for the people of the State.

6) We do now fervently hope that you as the Head of the State, by whose order the Orissa RTI Rules has been notified, shall look closely into the above mentioned omissions and commissions and do the needful for rectifying them as soon as possible in the supreme interest of effective operationalisation of the historic RTI Act 2005 in the State of Orissa.

Finally we look forward to a well-considered response from your end. 

Yours faithfully,

On behalf of

                        CASA ( Church’s Auxiliary for Social Action) and 

FOARD ( Farmers Organisation for Agriculture and Rural Development)        

At/PO- Banamalipur, Via- Balipatana, Dt- Khurda 

Dated: 16th September 2006 

CC:  

-     Chief Orissa Information Commissioner, State Guest House, Bhubaneswar   

-     Chief Minister, Orissa, Bhubaneswar

-     Chief Central Information Commissioner, Old JNU Campus, New Delhi-67 ( With a request to circulate it among the participants of the forthcoming National Convention on RTI) 

-    Sri T.Jacob, Joint Secretary Department of Personnel, Training and Public Grievances, Govt of India, New Delhi 

-    Chief Secretary Government of Orissa, Bhubaneswar

       -    Minister of State for Youth and I&PR, Orissa, Bhubaneswar