Revenue dept leads in the number of complaints, says GIC report.
Activists feel that the state govt is deliberately sitting on information that could expose corruption.
The state’s Right to Information (RTI) activists believe that the state government is not transparent in its working and that it deliberately sits on information that could expose corruption. Gujarat RTI Activists Association, which has around 5,000 members, says that there are around 14,000 RTI applications pending at different stages in various departments of the state government.
The activists are all set to stage a one-day demonstration in Gandhinagar on Monday. They will also meet the Gujarat governor to demand that all RTI applications be disposed of immediately.
Bhupendra Patel, general secretary of the activists association, alleged that the government had been sitting on a large number of RTI applications. “Since 2005, around 21,000 RTI applications have been filed in the state but only 7,000 had been disposed of completely. There are over 14,000 pending RTI applications. The state government is not revealing the exact figures,” he said.
He said that most of the applications are for information from the revenue department, followed by the panchayat department, home and also the roads and building department.
However, the annual report (2010-11) of the Gujarat Information Commission states that, in the financial year 2010-11, the state government received 4,761 applications out of which 3,341 were appeals. As regards disposal of appeals and complaints, the report mentions that it had disposed of 3,926 cases in the same financial year.
The report also says that the revenue department leads in number of complaints made against government departments, followed by the panchayat, rural housing and rural development departments. The report, however, also says that public information officers in various public bodies appear not to have done their jobs satisfactorily. This is the reason why many members of the public had been forced to approach the commission with complaints, the report says.
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