The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : RTI Act has helped check corruption, says CIC

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RTI Act has helped check corruption, says CIC

Staff Reporter

‘Aim of increasing responsiveness of agencies achieved’

Portal to have all decisions of State information commissions and the Central commission
It will help people build their cases better

BANGALORE: The information regime, brought in by the enactment of the Right To Information Act, has helped reduce corruption in the country significantly, M.M. Ansari, Central Information Commissioner (CIC), said on Saturday.

Speaking to The Hindu, he quoted figures from Transparency International which stated that corruption in the country had declined between 15 per cent and 20 per cent, over the last two years (the same period that the RTI Act has been in force).

“This means that the RTI Act has achieved its purpose of increasing responsiveness and accountability of government agencies,” Prof. Ansari said. Programmes such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan had fared better as people were seeking more information with regard to its ground-level implementation, he said.

On the nation-wide implementation of the RTI Act, Prof. Ansari said that the law had been better implemented in those States which earlier had a version similar to the RTI Act. “Those States that did not have an information dissemination law continue to face problems if the public is not well aware of the benefits of the Act and are not using it adequately.” The responsibility lies with respective State information commissions, he said.

Portal

Soon, people could have instant access to judgments passed by information commissions across the country, helping them build their cases better against any government agency, under the RTI Act.

In a move to take dissemination of information a step forward, a national portal with all decisions passed by the State information commissions and the Central Information Commission will be set up soon.

Announcing this at a press conference here on Saturday, Rajan Kashyap, convener of the National Co-ordination Committee and State Chief Information Commissioner, Punjab, said that the website would have links to the website of all information commissions.

Explaining the features of the proposed portal, K.K. Misra, Chief Information Commissioner, Karnataka, said: “It is an information gateway that will help the general public access all decisions to help in filing complaints under the RTI Act. It will also help information commissioners read up on judgements passed on similar issues in other commissions.”

Right now, different commissions pass diverse judgments on the same topics. Unlike the Supreme Court, whose decision is binding on lower courts, the judgments of the Central Information Commission are not binding on the State information commissions. The website is expected to disseminate information on the judgments and bring in some sort of uniformity in future judgments.

Resource centre

The portal may be managed by a National Resource Centre which is to be set up in the next three months. The resource centre will coordinate all activities of the information commissions. The decisions were taken at the third meeting of National Coordination Committee here in Bangalore.

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