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New Delhi, January 11: The Delhi cabinet is likely to consider tomorrow changing the Right to Information Rules 2001 for making the mode of deposit of application fee more flexible. The fee of Rs 25, if the proposal is approved by the Cabinet, may in future be paid through non-judicial stamps, cheques, demand draft and postal orders.
This small step will remove a major impediment in seeking information under RTI to make governance more transparent. An applicant now has to pass through two levels of babus. A nodal officer for RTI at the department concerned first takes the application and writes ‘Accept Rs 25’ on it. The applicant then goes to the cashier, deposits the amount and gets the receipt. Then he returns to the nodal officer after which his subordinate accepts the application and gives an acknowledgement and date for giving information.
The problem with this system, say RTI activists, is that the officials are often not around and the applicant has to make several trips. Arvind Kejriwal of Parivartan, which has been fighting for implementation of RTI, says: ‘‘The competent authority in any department to deal with such cases is never in the seat. If he is there, the cashier is not there.’’
And the nodal officer can really drive away applicants, particularly from slums and villages, by raising objections. The amendment is likely to ensure that the application is accepted without the intervention of the nodal officer.
There are many instances where seeking of information was discouraged. On December 2, Tandra Ghosh had gone to the south zone office of MCD where no one was willing to tell her who the nodal officer was. ‘‘A clerk made me wait for an hour and then sent me to the supervisor saying he would accept the application only if he said so,’’ she recalled. ‘‘I protested and was allowed to submit the form and money.’’ Even then, the clerk refused to give her the slip with the date for getting the information. Till date, she has not heard from them.
In the case of S.P.Gupta, the officer at MCD’s Karol Bagh Zone office refused to accept the fee. ‘‘He said I must get it in writing from the executive engineer. The engineer in turn said he had to find out if he could accept my application at all,’’ said Gupta. ‘‘So I kept running up and down for 10 days and invariably one of the two would be missing.’’
Finally, he settled for a postal order of Rs 25 and left it with the rest of the dak. Obviously, that wasn’t acceptable. |