Issues of RTI act in Himachal :

Access to information and its seamless flow is highly important in the context of liberalisation and new economic policy. The information gathered by Government officials at public expense is owned by the public— just as all the assets owned by government belong to the public. The Right to Information Act, 2005 has emerged as a new mechanism of openness, transparency, intellectual freedom and public accountability and as a tool for strengthening participatory democracy and ushering in people-centred governance. Main Prpblems confronting in Himachal are :

  1. The public authorities are required to make proactive disclosures but if someone surfs through various websites of Himachal Pradesh one would be surprised to see that the information once uploaded has hardly been updated and revised. This defeats the very purpose and spirit of proactive disclosures. The proactive disclosures have been done at the state level but these are also required to be done at lower levels.

2. The system of application is complicated due to enormous number of PIOs/APIOs. Often the fee is not accepted in cash and the IPO of Rs. 10/- denomination is often not available at the Post Offices. Thus the applicants are forced to pay a service charge of Rs. 35/- for the bank draft of Rs. 10/-. The applicant has to go through the same process again while making payment for the extra pages @Rs. 2/- per page. Moreover getting a visitor’s pass to enter certain government offices is also time-wasting. The applicants have to make multiple visits to the PIO to file the application and to receive the information sought.

 3. The Act allows applications to be filed in electronic form i.e. on email/website etc. However the applications filed under RTI via email are often not even acknowledged. Moreover there should be provision for online payment of application fee through internet banking and credit cards.

 4.The PIOs are required to provide assistance to the applicants as per the Section 5(3) of the Act. However instead of cooperating with the applicants the PIOs often force the applicants to withdraw applications. The unscrupulous government officials have been narrowly interpreting the various provisions of RTI Act to harass the information seeker.

5. It is unfortunate that in Himachal Pradesh the provision of inspection of work, documents and records under Section 2(j)(i) and the provision of taking certified samples of material under Secion 2(j)(iii) of the RTI Act are rarely used. The first appellate authorities on most occasions are in connivance with the PIO and a number of genuine appeals are dismissed as frivolous. Moreover, often the PIO is not present in these hearings, though he is required to be present in person.

6. The move of HP SIC to hold appeals at the district and sub-division levels is indeed welcome. However, there is a strong perception among the civil society organisations that the Information commission is lenient towards the erring PIOs and the penalty is imposed in only a very few cases. This is despite the fact that a large number of RTI applications are processed after the stipulated 30 days. The officials who provide wrong or incomplete or no information are left scot-free. Undue delay in getting information discourages the applicants as the purpose of seeking the information is lost in most cases.

 7. Under Section 19(8)(b) of the RTI Act, the Information Commission has the power to instruct the Public Authority to compensate the complainant for any loss or other detriment suffered. However the Information Commissions have rarely used this power. Sometimes the orders of the Information Commission are not strictly and promptly complied with. As a result, it is feared that the government officials will start to take this Act very lightly just like so many other legislations.

 8. The Himachal Pradesh Right to Information (3rd Amendment) Rules, 2007 provides that an application cannot be rejected on the ground that it is not in the prescribed format. The H.P. Government has also reduced the fee for the extra pages. These steps are indeed welcome. The Government must also urgently repeal Rule 3(2) of the Himachal Pradesh Right to Information Rules, 2006 which states that “A separate application shall be made in respect of each subject and in respect of each year to which the information relates.” This retrograde rule has only complicated the RTI process.

 9.There is a limit to the government’s role to educate people of the RTI Act as it is the government itself which had for years kept the information away from the public and behind the veil of secrecy. The RTI awareness campaigns should be entrusted to credible non-profit organisations.

            The biggest success of Indian democracy has been the transparency brought at the Panchayat levels, greater people participation and increasing use of RTI. On the basis of information gathered through RTI several corruption cases were revealed by the common man and the State government was forced to take prompt action against a number of Panchayat Pradhans and other concerned government officials. RTI along with social audit and e-governance will help in realising Gandhiji’s dream of Gram Swaraj and can make RTI as an effective tool of transpareny.