30th November 2005.

Shri Naveen Patnaik,

Chief Minister,

Orissa, Bhubaneswar

 

Respected Sir,

While I was pleased to learn that your government was one of the few State governments in the country that issued a fairly comprehensive set of rules with detailed formats for applying under the Right to Information Act, I was appalled on learning how regressive and impeditive they were. As a concerned citizen of India, I would like to bring the following to your kind notice and request your prompt action in ensuring that the Orissa Govt's RTI rules are citizen friendly and more importantly follow the letter and spirit of the National RTI Act.

  1. The RTI Act in its Section –7 (5) has categorically said that no fee shall be charged from BPL persons for application, cost of providing the information and cost of the print or electronic medium. But the Orissa Rules have allowed the exemption of application fee only {vide Rule-4(1)}, while depriving the BPL families of their lawful right to avail the exemption of other two fees. This provision of Orissa Rules is against the National RTI Act and needs to be changed to incorporate exemption for the BPL families from all the 3 fees mentioned under Section 7 (5) of the RTI Act.

  2. The Sections 27 and 28 of RTI Act have categorically specified the four kinds of fees, beyond which no appropriate Government or competent authority can impose any other fees. But the Orissa Rules have made an ultravires provision in prescribing such extraneous fees as fees for 1st and 2nd appeal and inspection of documents (Vide Schedule-1) and also in prescribing the cost of damage under Rule-10 and deposit of expenditure for production of witness or documents under the Rule-12. These extraneous provisions need to be struck off.

  3. The Section 20(2) of the Act says that disciplinary action in terms of the service rules shall be taken against the defaulter PIO if the latter persistently fails in his/her duty to provide the required information to the applicant citizens. The Orissa Rules under the Act should provide for the specific kinds of disciplinary action and modes of their execution.

  4. Rule-10(Calculation of cost of Damage), Rule-12(Deposit of Expenditure) and  Rule-13 (Realisation of penalties and damage) under  the Orissa RTI Rules deserve to be abolished, since these are outrageously ultravires of the mother law i.e., the Right to Information Act-2005.

  5. (A) The provision made under Sub-Rule 2 of Rule-4 under Orissa RTI Rules that the Applicant has to satisfy the PIO about his/her identity before his/her application is considered needs to be deleted. (B) The provision made under Sub-rule2(e) on the "identity" of an applicant defined as "an evidence to show the citizenship like an electoral photo identity card/passport or any other document which can satisfy the authority about the citizenship of the person" which is ultravires of the Section-6 of the RTI Act should be deleted

  6. (A) The Form-A (Application for Information) is too long, complex and over-demanding one, which should be reduced to five to six columns only. The Column-2 asking for Father/ Spouse name, Column-3 asking for permanent address and Column-4 asking for particulars in respect of identity of Applicant and Column-8( Is this information not made available by the Public Authority ?) are absolutely redundant and ultravires too vis-à-vis the Section6(2) of the RTI Act and should therefore be struck off from the form-A.

    (B) The Application Form should be made optional and no application for information should be rejected as provided currently under Form-C on the ground that the application Form has not been filled up "complete in all respects" in view of Section 7(9) of the RTI Act.

  7. The Form-B should mention the detail break up of the fees that a citizen has to pay as obligatory on the part of the PIO under the Section 7(3a)

  8. The Application Fees for 1st Appeal and 2nd Appeals are ultravires of the Section-27 and 28 of the RTI Act in which the specific kinds of fees allowable under the Act have been mentioned. Moreover, the Form-D and Form-E made for the purpose of making appeals do not contain a Form for acknowledgement receipt to be issued to citizen-applicant on submission of his/her appeal.

  9. (A) A serious technical incongruity has been noticed between Form-G (Cash register)  where various modes of payment such as Challan, Bank Draft and Cash have been mentioned at Column-4, whereas the Schedule on fees allows only treasury challan and cash.  It is suggested that various other modes payment such as postal order, money order, Bank cheque and ATM should be allowed too in for the convenience of citizens at large.

    (B) Another serious case of incongruity is that while the Rules 4(1) allows the electronic mail system for the applicants, the Form-A containing the Application Form omits to mention it and limits the correspondence to post or person only.

  10. The various kinds of fees as prescribed under the schedule are unbearably exorbitant. The amount of said fees should be drastically reduced in compatibility with the Section-4(4) and section-7(5) of the RTI Act.

  11. 11. A time limit for disposal of 2nd appeal by the State Information Commission should be provided under the Orissa RTI Rules.  Orissa would do well to take a leaf from Tamil Nadu or Madhya Pradesh both of which have already prescribed a time limit of 30 days within which their respective State Information Commissions have to dispose of the 2nd appeals.

  12. The Right to Food Campaign, Orissa, is spearheading the fight for citizen friendly RTI rules in Orissa. They have already staged a protest Dharna in front of the Raj Bhavan. I stand in their support and I do sincerely hope that you will set Orissa on the right path towards truer democracy and good governance.

Regards,

Vishal

 

Vishal Kudchadkar

11755 National Blvd Apt 9

Los Angeles CA 90064

Email: vishalk@gmail.com, Ph: (323) 632 6479

 

CC:

Shri T Jacob,

Joint Secretary, Department of Personnel and Training, Government of India