BANGALORE: The state government’s plan to set up business process outsourcing (BPO) centre, the first-of-its-kind in the country, for filing petitions under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, will be launched soon. M N Vidyashankar, Principal Secretary, IT/BT Government of Karnataka said, “The trial run is on and we are working on the technical glitches before we launch the centre. Though the inaugural date cannot be confirmed, it will be launched soon.” The government will fund the project and also provide an annual maintenance fee.
CMC Limited, a Tata group company, had won the bid to set up the BPO, which was expected to be set up by June last year.
According to the Karnataka Information Commission officials, all the departments across the state receive nearly one lakh RTI requests per year. After the completion of the call centre, citizens can file RTI requests through phone.
The call centre, in turn, will forward the request to the department concerned. The department concerned will have to furnish the details within a time period of 30 days, starting from the day the call centre receives a complaint. “The Information Commission receives an average of 11,000 appeals every year. Setting up the BPO will reduce the number of appeals, it will streamline the filing applications,” said N Jayadeva, secretary, KIC.