What goes around, comes around

It is not only the Chief Justice of India who wants his own office out of purview of RTI.  Even some of high courts are quite uncooperative about honouring RTI.

Following news story sums it all.  When it comes to implementation of right to information act (RTI), the courts are totally clueless and unhelpful to applicants.  The fact that this happened with a high court bench shows the high-handedness and aloofness which has become a characteristic of Indian judiciary.

The common response of many in public to any social initiative is that “it is not going to work”, “the system is too corrupt”, “it is all very good, but you are wasting your time”.

Here is a report forwarded by an RTI activist Mr Vikramsimha, which details the status of implementation of Right to Information Act especially in Bangalore and Karnataka.

KARNATAKA SOCIAL WATCH – A REPORT ON THE FORWARD ACT – THE RIGHT TO INFORMATION ACT 2005

___N Vikramsimha, Trustee, Mahithi Hakku Adhyayana Kendra

The DoPT (Department of Personnel and Training) had conducted a brain storming session on 31 March 2010 with representatives of civil society organisations (CSO) on RTI.

The record of discussions has been uploaded by DoPT in PDF format at link below:

http://persmin.gov.in/WriteData/CircularNotification/ScanDocument/RTI/2_7_2006-IR.pdf

Each state can have its own rules to facilitate implementation of RTI Act.  Given below is the so called Form A according to the Karnataka Right to Information Rules, 2005.

Rule 4 talks about the Form A but it is ok to follow another format of RTI application as long it has the relevant information:

On last sat, the RTI (Right to Information) session was conducted in Ittina Abby’s party hall, and thanks goes to initiative and arrangements made by J P Rao of Ittina Abby apartments.  Following are the points from that discussion. 

In case you have not read it before, following post gives the basic information on RTI concepts and usage as covered in first session so it is a required reading.

Really good joke sent by someone… those who file RTI applications will get the moral of the story.

Jack and Max are walking from religious service. Jack wonders whether it would be all right to smoke while praying.

Max replies, "Why don’t you ask the Priest?"

So Jack goes up to the Priest and asks, "Father, may I smoke while I pray ?"

The Priest replies, "No, my son, you may not! That’s utter disrespect to our religion."

Jack goes back to his friend and tells him what the good Priest told him.

You can check the discussion points from first RTI (Right to Information) session on 20th March 2010 to know the basic information about filing an RTI application. 

Any new points discussed are covered below.

Some of the real life examples discussed with regards to framing of RTI questions were:

Below is a nice flow chart explaining the process and times taken in various steps in filing an RTI – Right to Information application, and subsequent steps in case one is not satisfied with reply, or reply does not arrive etc.