RTI act to be respected!
- The CPIO must be responsible for proper reply so that RTI activists be encouraged to maintain transparency.
jj correspondent
Jammu, Feb 09: Why is not the Jammu Municipal Corporation taking RTI application seriously? Why is the Jammu Municipal Corporation mocking on RTI Act by ignoring the actual reply? Why are the officers of Jammu Municipal Corporation so callous towards RTI activist? Why is not the Nodal officer RTI of Jammu Municipal Corporation working properly? Why should the RTI activist suffer by the hands of officers of Jammu Municipal Corporation? Why not the officers of Jammu Municipal Corporation think twice while giving illogical and irresponsible reply? Why the officers of Jammu Municipal Corporation dislike transparency? These are the basic questions should be kept in the mind of officers of Jammu Municipal Corporation while making replies to the RTI activist.
The Jammu Muncipal Corporation has received a RTI application from one senior citizen and social activist ML Sharma on 17-10-2022 and the then designated Nodal Officer RTI Roopali Puri has referred the same RTI application to the Assistant Commissioner (R) and Secretary as both are designated as CPIO vide its office letter No JMC/RTI/166-67 dated 20-10-2022 and both the CPIOs have received their letters respectively.
The intriguing part of the story is that both the CPIOs have not given an iota of reply to the 6 questions asked by the RTI activist. I will like to mention here that RTI activist is a retired DFO and he is well versed with the RTI act but the officers of JMC have their laws and rules and they can do anything as they want because it seems that they are above the law.
The reply from the Secretary Jammu Municipal Corporation was very innovative and the man did not bother to use more than six words in the reply.
He used only six words are like this – ‘Does not pertain to this section’. He has not bothered to suggest that to which section it pertains. He made reply addressed to Nodal Officer RTI vide his letter No JMC/S/1011-12 dated 02-11-2022 and also sent a copy to the RTI activist.
(To be continued)
