Several prominent activists on Thursday said they would boycott Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s inaugural address at the annual Right to Information (RTI) convention tomorrow, as only a few of them have been invited.
Advertisement
Speaking on the theme?RTI and village administration, the resource person, State Coordinator, Disaster Management, ATI Kohima, Dr Hovithal N Sothu said that the main objective of the RTI Act was to create a practical regime of right to information for citizens to secure transparency and accountability of public authorities to grant a statutory right to information for every citizen and to contain corruption.
He said, ‘ the Citizen is at the centre of the law, who can file any number of applications under the Act for information that is in the records of the Public Authorities, mostly Government Departments, subject to a few exemptions like Defence matters, etc. Another benefit of the Act has been that the Public Utilities are now mandated to keep their records up-to-date and ready for dissemination’. Dubbudu reportedly said that he was surprised, because he has been working for a few time now with the state government, which recommended him for participation in the two-day convention, organised by the Central Information Commission.
Since its inception, the CIC has received 2,12,762 complaints and appeals, of which 1,62,504 have been disposed of in its adjudicatory role.
The RTI Act does not have any provision for penalty, either for the activist or the PIO, for which there are other avenues and institutions.
“It is severely restricted, only seven have been invited”.
He expressed that such approach have hampered the implementation of RTI and further urged all stakeholders to partake in making the State government more transparent and accountable to the people.
“NCPRI is deeply distressed to learn that the National RTI convention has become an exclusive affair which is being restricted by the central government under frivolous “security concerns”. “We will use the RTI to probe the sequence of events and will fight to establish the independence and pro-people democratic mandate of the CIC”, National Campaign for the People’s Right to Information (NCPRI) said in a resolution passed today.
“It is an indication of government wanting to take over the decision-making process to an extent it can”.
Advertisement
Apart from Roy, the signatories to the boycott resolution are Nikhil Dey, Anjali Bharadwaj, Amrita Johry, Venkatesh Nayak, Lokesh Batra and Shekhar Singh.
