[New Delhi]Rajnath,For Transparency,Asks To Give Information To All Applicants
Central Home Minister Rajnath Singh said
Officials should reply to every RTI application irrespective of what kind of information has been sought by the applicant, He asserted that the importance of the transparency law has increased in present times.
Addressing the inaugural function of the 11th annual Central Information Commission convention, Singh said his ministry was recently asked what is the action plan of the government against “a zombie or alien attack” and he had ensured that response is given to it.
Singh also inaugurated the e-court system in the Central Information Commission which will make the transparency panel go paperless in matters of appeals and complaints being processed by it.
The new system has come into place as the Commission has digitised over 1.5 lakh files with it, allowing people to file appeals and complaints online without any requirement of hard copy.
.Singh said over 40,000 suggestions were received on GST.
Speaking on the occasion, Minister of State for Prime Minister’s Office Dr Jitendra Singh said although there is no pend ency, the filing of such grievances has gone up from about two lakh annually when the new government was formed to eight lakh now.
Quoting a couplet of Mirza Ghalib, Singh, while taking a veiled dig at UPA government, said people file grievances because they have hope of them being resolved.
He said a higher number of RTI applications are being processed but still the numbers are increasing.
“We cannot check corruption by laws,” Singh said.
Underlining the menace of frivolous RTI applications, Singh said one must test it on a couple of parameters to “avoid the avoidable” RTI applications like whether the motive is public or personal.
Chief Information Commissioner Radha Krishna Mathur also highlighted the system being choked by a single RTI user as among 35,000 pending cases before the Commissioner, about 4,000 have been filed by a single person.