Want information? Fill the form and get it.
Sounds
strange, isn't it? Its true. The act conferring the right
to information to the citizens of the
country passed on
Wednesday provides the flexibility to us to obtain any
information pertaining the activities of
government offices. The act is called the Right To Information Act
2005. This path-breaking act provides the right to obtain
information on government offices and curb corruption. As
such India has been placed in the top 55 nations in the
world to have such legislation.
Well, the underlying
significance of the act is that it makes the activities
going on in government offices to become transparent and
makes possible to one and all of the country to extract any
information from the government. As a consequence the city
corporations and municipalities of the country are supposed
to have
officers designated as information officers whose
prime responsibility is to disseminate the information to
the citizens on request, which can be done just by filling
a simple form. The officers are at three different levels,
Public information officers, assistant public information
officers and the appellate officers. The commissioner
himself is the public information
Officer for all
information coming under his jurisdiction, for information
relevant to his department. By the way, how does the
mechanism work? The assistant public information officer is
vested with the task of receiving applications from the
public. The cost of the application is only
rs.10/- and the
information that is being queried is processed and the
applicant is provided with the necessary information within
the stipulated period of one month. The citizen would be
charged Rs.2/- for information provided in the A4 size
print format and Rs.50/- for CDs and floppies. The failure
of the concerned authority to provide the requested
information may be legally approached by informing the
Chief Information officer of the state. So, be it a query
regarding lease of property by the city corporations or the
amount of developmental work that has spilled over the
previous years or the funds allotted for each ward,
everything is just a request away in the most simplest form
of filling an application.
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