BENGALURU: With Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) RTI cell shut since 2017, applicants now have to take up the arduous task of looking for public information officers (PIOs) themselves to file their RTI applications. Earlier, the applicants had to address their requests to ‘PIO, BBMP’, which would then be forwarded to the departments and officers concerned. But now the applicant has to find out the official after going through the list of PIOs from the BBMP website.
“BBMP expects people to travel across the city to find the PIOs,” complained Ravindranath Guru of KRIA Katte, a forum of RTI activists. He alleged that this was a mechanism of BBMP to deny citizens information. Activist Kathyayini Chamaraj of CIVIC Bangalore said the process was simpler when the cell was active. Kathyayini had filed three RTIs, and one of them regarding a survey on kids aged 0-18 by BBMP. She is still awaiting a response. “PIOs are difficult to track down as they are field officers and have no assistants. Often the PIOs don’t accept RTIs and ask to file it with another department, leaving applicants confused,” she said.
Denying the claims, BBMP Chief Commissioner Tushar Girinath said, “An RTI cell is not required. That system was time-consuming, and the RTI Act does not mandate a separate department.” He also claimed that RTI requests were not returned. “Any application irrelevant to a department is forwarded to the department concerned,” he said.
The BBMP website contains a list of around 500 PIOs and appellate authorities, only in Kannada. Girinath assured a list will be uploaded in English. According to a report by Karnataka Information Commission, 4,30,511 RTI requests have been filed in 2016-2017. However, post 2017, there are no annual reports on the website.