Mass clearance sees most appeals cleared

The state information commission's mass appeal drive saw large number of appeals being cleared at the last day of the four day drive. As per the tally 457 appeals were cleared of the 607 taken for the clearance. All of these were from Mumbai and belonged to the Mumbai head quarter division. The second appeals pending at the Mumbai head quarter division was 3,526 by November end.

“The response was good and almost all appeals got cleared due to three reasons. Either people got all the information that was declined, or were given the additional information they sought or they realized that the action or information they sought, is not with the public authority,” said Vijay Kuvalekar, acting state chief information commissioner.

He added, “Sometimes communication alone solves problems (between public information officer and applicants and this drive facilitated that).” When asked if he would hold another such drive, Kuvalekar said that he will try to dispose all the cases cleared today. All applications cleared today cannot be considered disposed off at the commission as the commissioner needs to sign them and send them to people.

Though he was skeptical if it will actually happen. “The stenos are less so it will be a challenge. I am open to consider if people from the society are willing to come forward and help,” he added. D. RajaGopalan, state chief information commissioner and Arvind Shukla, information commissioner of Gujarat attended the meet. They plan to implement the same in Gujarat, said Kuvalekar.