This is a very high standard website for disseminating information and accepting online application for rti. But I request the authorities concerned to make a provision for accepting 1st and 2nd apeal cost by online by which the applicants who are living outside odisha can easily access the information.

This is a good website called as RTICMM. This may be fruitful for all citizen.

The RTI Website in Odisha is realy very much helpful to the People of Odisha as well as India. The contain of the Website and the different menu,sub menu are also eassy to access.

RTI-CMM helped me to get the GPF statement of my wife pending for last ten years in the office of the Controller of Accounts,Orissa-madan mohan panda

I like the system.It is very helpful for senior citizen.

Proposed Amendment for authorizing Orissa Information Commission to summon an Appellant to appear in the Hearing – How far legally correct?



Dear friends,



Recently, I came across in the newly launched website of Govt of Orissa ‘Loka Soochana’ the proceedings of the Committee purportedly constituted by the Government to recommend amendments to Orissa RTI Rules-2005 and Orissa Information Commission (Appeal Procedure) Rules-2006. It was astonishing to see that the said Committee in its 1st meeting on 18.11.09 recommended inter alia to give power to State Information Commission to issue summons to the complainant or appellant to remain present during the hearing. Their exact words ran – “In respect of Orissa Information Commission (appeal procedure) Rules, 2006 Rule 9 (3), the following rule shall be substituted, namely

“(3) Where the Commission has not decided finally the appeal/ complaints and requires the presence of the appellant / complainant, the commission may issue summon to the appellant or complainant to remain present during the hearing or on the request of the appellant / complainant , the commission may hear him or her before any final decision is taken.”



Of the two components of this recommendation, there is nothing novel or objectionable as such about the second one, namely “on the request of the appellant / complainant, the commission may hear him or her before any final decision is taken”. Because the parent Act (RTI Act 2005) in its Section 19(9) casts an obligation on the Commission to ‘give notice of its decision, including any right of appeal, to the complainant and the public authority’. This provision of the Act intends that the Commission as a matter of rule ought to mention in each of its decisions whether either of the parties can file a further appeal against the said decision. Unfortunately, the Orissa Information Commission has so far squarely failed to discharge this obligation i.e. to inform the parties about their inherent right to challenge the concerned decision of the Commission. Instead the closing words of every decision of the Commission are such as to covey its absolute finality, allowing no scope of any further appeal. Thus the second component of the above recommendation is fully in consonance of the letter and spirit of the Act, but should be reworded as follows- “The Commission shall mention in its decision the right of appeal of the Appellant /Complainant or of the PIO or Public Authority against the said decision and the time-limit within which such further appeal can be made”.



Now, as regards the first component of the Committee’s above recommendation, i.e. the commission may issue summon to the appellant or complainant to remain present during the hearing, it is first of all required to grasp the real implications of the specific word ‘summons’, which has a highly loaded meaning as per Civil Procedure Code, 1908 (as referred in Section 18-3 of RTI Act 2005) from where it has been derived. The Section 27 of the said Code captioned ‘Summons to Defendants’ clearly says, “a summons may be issued to the defendant to appear and answer the claim and may be served in manner prescribed”. And a little afterwards, Section 32 of the said Code, captioned ‘Penalty for default’ mentions such punitive measures against a defaulter of summons as ‘issue of warrant for his arrest, attachment and sale of his property, imposition of fine upto five thousand rupees and civil imprisonment’. Thus it is absolutely clear that the power of issuing summons and charging penalty, if any, in the event of its violation is applicable only to the ‘defendant’, and can never ever be applied to an Appellant or Complainant.



It seems the proponents of the Amendment, who are absolutely ignorant of the ABC of country’s civil law are out to arm the Orissa Information Commission with the draconian power to ‘summon’ and penalize by way of fine, attachment of property and even imprisonment an innocent applicant for information, who may be an ordinary citizen, even a BPL person, and who has incidentally taken recourse to a complaint or appeal before the Commission only to redress his harassment by the Public Information Officer or some such officer in a public authority. And considered from a reverse angle, if the proposed amendment is given effect to, no citizen, howsoever harassed he might be by the arbitrary act of the concerned officers, shall ever dare to lodge any appeal or complaint before the Commission, simply out of his lurking fear of summons and attendant penalty. And further, given his ultimate fate of being summoned and penalized, no citizen shall like to apply for information under the RTI Act simply because he can’t do anything against the PIO even if the latter doesn’t respond to his application at all or provides false and misleading information to him. Thus, by this single, apparently innocuous amendment, the RTI Act shall be driven to a dead stop as soon as it is given effect to.



Moreover, it seems the proponents of the above amendment are also ignorant of an important rider, underlined twice in the RTI Act 2005 about the onus or burden of proof in the matter of adjudication of any complaint or appeal. Section 19(5) of the Act says, “In any appeal proceedings, the onus to prove that a denial of a request was justified shall be on the Central Public Information Officer or State Public Information Officer, as the case may be, who denied the requests”. The same thing is also repeated in proviso to Section 20 (1) of the Act, “Provided further that the burden of proving that he acted reasonably and diligently shall be on the Central Public Information Officer or the State Public Information Officer, as the case may be”. In plain words, it is not the complainant or appellant, but the PIO and deemed PIOs, who ought to bear the burden of appearing in the hearing and producing any evidence if necessary before the Commission, if he wishes to get exonerated from the charge leveled against him by the Complainant or Appellant, who is by definition an aggrieved person. Keeping in view this overriding provision in the parent Act, the existing appeal procedure rules of both Central Commission (Rule -7) and State Commission (Rule-9) have rightly stated that an appellant or complainant may attend the hearing in person or send his authorized representative to attend the hearing on his behalf or even opt out from appearing in any manner altogether. Just by way of analogy, it may be said that compelling an appellant or complainant by way of summons to attend the hearing is like compelling a woman victim of dowry violence to prove before the Police or Court how and if at all she was subject to any violence.



Under the circumstances, keeping in view the letter and spirit of the Act and existing appeal procedure rules of Centre and Orissa, the 1st component of the proposed amendment to Orissa Information Commission (Appeal Procedure) Rules 2006 should be reworded as follows: Where any PIO or deemed PIO or any other officer representing the Responding Party in an appeal or complaint absents himself from the hearing without any prior approval from the Commission to that effect, the Commission may issue summons to the said officer to remain present during the hearing, failing which he shall be subject to penalty as prescribed under Section 32 of Civil Procedure Code 1904.



It is interesting to note here that for enhancing my own understanding about the whole matter, I submitted two RTI Applications, one to the PIO, Orissa Information Commission on 8.7.2010 and another to PIO, Central Information Commission on 10.7.2010 seeking their respective positions on the following questions-



- Is the Commission empowered to issue summons to citizens making complaints against PIO for appearance in the hearing? If so, please provide proof of it.



- Has the Commission issued any summons to complainants/ appellants for appearance during hearing?



You may wonder to know that the PIO, Orissa Information Commission instead of formulating any response of their own just quoted the Section 18 (3) of RTI Act 2005, where it is mentioned that the Commission, ‘while inquiring into any matter under this section’ has been vested with certain ‘powers of a civil court while trying a suit under Code of Civil Procedure 1908’ including the power of ‘summoning and enforcing the attendance of persons and compelling them to give oral or written evidence on oath and to produce the documents or things’. Such a reply from Orissa Information Commission was not only evasive but confusing. Because the Section-27 of the above Code, which has already been quoted and analysed above, doesn’t authorize any Court or for that matter any Commission to issue summons against any ‘person’ as such, but only against the ‘defendants’. And who are the ‘defendants’ in the context of RTI Act, if not PIO, deemed PIO, 1st Appellate Officer and such other officers, against whose decision or action the appeal or complaint has been lodged by the aggrieved citizens?



In sharp contrast, however, the PIO, Central Information Commission in his reply clarified that no summons has been yet issued by the Central Information Commission to any complainant or appellant for appearing during the hearing, and added that summons as such is not issued to the complainant or appellant.



It seems the Central Information Commission has rightly understood the letter and spirit of the law in respect of the power of issuing summons that has been given to the Commission under Section-18(3) of RTI Act and also the person to whom it can be issued and the person to whom it can’t be issued.



It further seems the Orissa Committee on Amendment is as much false in its understanding of the Commission’s power to issue summons, as it has falsely peddled one of its members (Mr.Jatindra Mohan Mohanty) as a former Advocate General of Orissa- all this perhaps to garner public credibility behind its otherwise indefensible bogey of amendments.



Be that as it may, will the learned proponents of the proposed amendment take a little trouble of reading the Sectio-27 of CPC 1908 and learning from the practical wisdom of Central Information Commission before they push through further the said amendment which, as already shown, is patently absurd and ultra vires both CPC 1908 and RTI Act 2005?

Hello, This is Hasan Khan from 20 km far from Bhubneswar , States that there are several mediums available at city for information. But at village area there are no such type of facility available.
Two stated suggestions should be implemented

1. Liabrary in every Panchayat with intenet connected PC....

2. Oriya Magazines should be introduce in low cost for improvement of social knowlrdge.

Thanking You
Hasan Khan
9778577864
9437104348
9583199708

How to take RTI to masses? - The Bihar experiment with Call centers:

RTI Act was passed by the Government with the hope that it would provide relief to the common man by making governance transparent. Experience shows that the process of using RTI Act has become very cumbersome. It is too complicated for a common man to use RTI.


The most common problems being faced by the people are as follows:


Many people are illiterate. They cannot write RTI applications. Due to this factor alone, RTI cannot be used by a huge section of population.
People do not know which Department to approach for which kind of issue. And without this knowledge, it is impossible to file an RTI application today.
Even if one knows the Department, there are so many PIOs in the same Department that it would be quite difficult for a person to know who is the right PIO.
Even if a person somehow is able to find the right PIO, the PIO refuses to accept application on some pretext or the other.
Depositing application fee of Rs 10 is another nightmare. One has to either go in person to the concerned office to deposit cash or make a Demand Draft or a postal order to send it by post. In addition to having a financial cost, it also involves spending a lot of time.
If one does not get right information, filing an appeal is even more complicated and tiring process.

In nutshell, it is extremely difficult to file an RTI application or to file an appeal today. This is reducing RTI to be an affair of elite, urban, educated middle class.


How do we take RTI to the illiterate masses in rural areas?


It is possible to do that and to address all the above issues by using simple technology of call centers. It will work as follows:


· The Government will hire a call center and will give two phone nos to the public. One of the no would be RTI Helpline No (RHN) and the other will be RTI Application No (RAN).

· RHN will be an ordinary no with normal call charges. If any citizen wants to get any help about how to use RTI, he can use this no.

· RAN will be a premium no. Anyone who wishes to file an RTI application will call up this no. Any call to this no will be charged Rs 10 in addition to normal call charges for the duration of the call. Rs 10 is the application fee for RTI application.

· So, when a person calls up RAN, he will be asked to tell his name, address, what information does he want and from which Department does he want that information. This conversation will be voice recorded and also typed on computer simultaneously by the call center executive receiving the call.

· If the citizen does not know the department concerned, then the call center staff will help him identify it. But in some rare cases, even the call center staff would not know about the exact department. To deal with such cases, the Government could assign some official to help call center staff.

· Many ordinary citizens may not even know what type of information to ask for. They would just know their problem. Call center staff could be trained to help and deal with such cases. A good amount of hand holding would be required to help poor and illiterate people.

· Once an RTI application has thus been filed, the call center (CC) will take two copies of it and send one copy to the applicant.

· The other copy will be sent to the concerned PIO by one of the following methods:

o If the PIO has access to e-mail, it will be sent through e-mail. This is the quickest and cheapest way to transmit application.

o If he does not have access to e-mail, the application will be faxed to him.

o If he neither has access to e-mail nor to the fax, it will be sent to him by post.

· The Call Centre (CC) will be declared as an APIO by the Government to be able to accept applications and transfer them to concerned PIO.

· The PIO will have 35 days (from the date of receipt of application in CC) to provide information. During this period, the PIO should prepare information and send it to the applicant directly.

· If applicant is not satisfied with the information received, he can call up the CC again and express his dissatisfaction after telling his reference no.

· His dissatisfaction will be voice recorded and typed. This will become his first appeal, which would be forwarded to the first appellate authority in the same manner as the RTI application was done in first place.

· The first appellate will deal with the appeal as he normally does. The results will be communicated to the applicant.

· If the applicant is not satisfied with the first appellate order, he can similarly file his second appeal.


Financial implications:


Government will have to share a part of Rs 10 application fee with telecom companies. In order to account for that, the Government may decide to raise the application fee for applications filed through call center by a small amount. But it is suggested not to do that immediately. It would be best to let it run for the first few months with the present level of fee. If the loss of revenue is small, there is no point in increasing the cost of application and cause hardships to the public.
Government would get a share in the normal call charges collected by the telecom company for the call duration in addition to the application fee. This amount will partly offset the above loss.
Government will need to hire a call center and bear the charges for the same.
Cost of transmitting applications or appeals to PIOs or appellate authorities and making calls to applicants for providing information will have to be paid to CC on actual basis. But this is the cost of processing application, for which the Government collects Rs 10 application fee. Therefore, this should not be treated as an additional cost.

Amendments to RTI rules required to implement this system:


The CC will have to be declared as an APIO.
Acceptance of fee in this manner on phone will have to be included in the rules as an accepted mode of payment of fee.

Benefits of this system:


· Now, even an illiterate person will be able to file an RTI application – citizen can just pick up a phone and speak out what he wants to know

· CC executive will help in drafting right questions for the citizens’ problems

· No need to know the right department or the right PIO. CC will help in doing that.

· No need to make DD or postal order for depositing fee.

· Appeal can be filed on phone

· No need to travel to the office of PIO – accessible from any phone from anywhere.

· Application could be filed in a few minutes against a few days it takes today

Multi-lingual – people can file applications in their own languages
·

POSTED BY SANDIP DASVERMA AT 9:49 PM
LABELS: THE CALL CENTER CONCEPT IN BIHAR



SANDIP DASVERMA