HYDERABAD: A public interest litigation petition was filed in the Telangana High Court seeking direction to the State government and its Information Commission to take steps for uploading data of 17 items of all the public authorities on RTI website as mandated under the Right to Information Act, 2005, and to create web portal for filing RTI applications.
Petitioner Thandava Yogesh, an advocate, sought the court to declare non-publication of data of 17 items as per the information handbook issued on Sept 26, 2005 as mandated under Section 4(1)(b) of the RTI Act in the web portal designated for the purpose and not providing electronic RTI application filing process as violation of the Act 2005.
He submitted that the government is under obligation to provide facility of online filing of RTI applications. However, the State has not taken any steps in the last 14 years to create online portal.
The petitioner submitted that it is the duty of every public authority to upload data of all 17 items like particulars of its organisation, functions and duties; powers and duties of its officers and employees; procedure followed in the decision making process; norms set for discharge of its functions and so on and should be placed on public domain within 120 days from the enactment of the Act. However, nothing has been done even after 14 years of commencement of the Act.
According to the petitioner, the erstwhile AP government had issued orders in Jan 2011 to all the public authorities for implementation of Section 4 of the Act by uploading required data on portal.
The Telangana State Information Commission, in an RTI reply to a letter in June this year, has stated that there are total 8,801 public authorities registered on the web portal designated for the purpose. However, only 76 of them have submitted data under Section 4 (1)(b) of the RTI Act.