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RTI

 Do Not Pay Bribe!

By S.R. Venkatram

1. You made a complaint to the police but they are not registering FIR.
2. You want to know balance in your provident fund account. You have retired and want to claim your PF but the authorities are not responding to your letters.
3. You are a government servant. Your requests for claim of medical reimbursements are not being heeded to.
4. You are a government servant and have been transferred against the government policy. The government is not responding to your requests to transfer you back.
5. You have a faulty electricity meter in your house and the authorities are not replacing it despite your repeated requests.
6. The sewer is choked in your locality for some time and the authorities have not responded to your repeated requests.
7. You have applied for Passport or any type of license or various certificates like marriage, death, birth, caste and so on but things do not move.
8. You sought correction in your water, telephone, electricity bills but the authorities do not oblige.

Now you have a solution to all these problems and you can get things done without paying bribes by using Right to Information Act (RTI).

Right to Information Act 2005, an Act promulgated on October 2005, empowers every citizen to secure access to information under the control of public authorities in order to promote Transparency and Accountability in the working of every Public Authority. You can seek information, take copies, or inspect government documents. If the information is not provided within 30 days of application, the concerned officer becomes liable for a penalty Rs.250 per day of default up to a maximum of Rs.25,000 per application. If wrong information is provided, a penalty up to a maximum of Rs.25.000 can be imposed on the officer.

ALL THAT YOU NEED TO DO NOW IS:

For any of the problems stated above, file a requisition under RTI Act demanding to know:

1. Daily progress made on your application so far i.e.., when did the application reach each concerned officer, for how long did it stay with these officers and what did he/she do during that period.
2. Names and designations of the officials who were supposed to have taken action on your application and who have not done so.
3. What action would be taken against these officials for dereliction of duty and for causing harassment to the public. By when would that action be taken.
4. By when the work would be done now.

In the normal circumstance, an application of this nature would be thrown into a dustbin by the officials. But the officials are now obliged to give the desired information within 30 days (or refuse it by citing specific exemptions from disclosures listed in the Act). If the Officer does not answer within 30 days, he can be fined and the amount collected from his salary. It is not easy to dodge these questions.

When you ask about the progress made on your application, the officer cannot write back and confess that he has not acted on your application for so many months. That would be submission of guilt on paper.

When you ask for names and designations of the officers in their establishments who were supposed to have taken action on your application, they just cannot provide such names and designations because their responsibilities get fixed.

The experience so far is, as soon as an application is received from a citizen under Right to Information Act, files move at an amazing speed and usually the pending work is done even before 30-day deadline provided under the Act.

For any clarification and or further information on RTI please contact RTI activists. Use RTI and make Democracy more meaningful.

Regards.

S.R. Venkatram

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