Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

‘Awareness regarding RTI Act very high in State’

Photo: S. Siva Saravanan

Collecting details: Tamil Nadu Information Commissioner R. Perumalsamy (second left) hearing a petitioner (left) and an official (right) at a review meeting of appeal petitions held at the Coimbatore Collectorate on Friday. —

Coimbatore: The Right to Information Act aimed at ensuring transparency in administration is a second independence ensured to the people, observed State Information Commissioner R. Perumalsamy on Friday.

He was talking to reporters after reviewing the enquiries and replies given to appeal petitions at Coimbatore. He also held a hearing with the applicants and officials from the department concerned in terms of the appeal petitions pending with the Commission.

Mr. Perumalsamy said that Tamil Nadu bagged the first place in terms of appeal petitions and said that 30 petitions from five districts such as Coimbatore, Tirupur, Erode, Salem and Nilgiris were taken up for hearing. Regarding some of them, departments had already responded.

He said that awareness regarding Right to Information Act was very high in the State. Ever since the introduction of the RTI Act, a total of 1,11,000 applications had come to the State Information Commission of which orders had been issued on 82,328.

Enquiries were over and preparation of response was underway in respect of 8,341 applications. In cases where officials failed to respond or give proper replies, show cause notices had been served on 1,200 officials.

Even after serving of show cause notices wherein officials had failed to respond, the State Information Commission had levied a penalty of Rs. 25,000 each on 40 officials so far.

Mr. Perumalsamy also pointed out instances of RTI applications being misused for asking irrelevant questions. He also said that in such cases applications were being returned to the applicants.

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