BANGALORE: Seems like complaints never stop to follow Palike, which has been grabbing headlines for all the wrong reasons. This time, the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has topped the list as the civic body to have most number of complaints against it. Out of the 12,000 cases registered with the Karnataka Information Commission (KIC), nearly 25 per cent of them are against BBMP, followed by BDA and BWSSB.
“Despite penalising public information officers (PIOs), there still seems to be lack of awareness in furnishing requested information to applicants.
To improve this, the KIC is planning to hold a workshop for all BBMP PIOs,” said N Jayadeva, secretary, KIC . The KIC has six information commissioners, including the chief information commissioner.
To facilitate quick disposal of complaints, the Commission is holding hearings outside the headquarters in different districts. However, even this has not helped reduce pendency of cases as the KIC still has around 12,000 cases pending, brought forward from 2008, apart from 11,000 appeals they receive every year.
Even after six years of enacting the Act, the implementation of the RTI has not been followed up. The state government has constituted a high-level committee on implementation of the legislation, which seems to have become dysfunctional.