Awareness
A friend Kabilan had told me that he had contacts with a person in Doordarshan and that he will talk to that lady and tell me. So once that happens there will be some progress on the DD program. The BIG FM radio program continued and this week too. We took three callers, and all of them had problems with their ration card. The sunday awareness session in Tiruthani was postponed due to my health. A person from a consumer protection group Dilli Babu had called me up saying he wanted training for RTI for his group. Meanwhile he personally wanted to learn RTI and so he came home. I trained him about RTI.
Working with the commission
Keen on going ahead with putting pressure on the Commission, I am looking at decisions of about 6 months (Jul 2007 - Dec 2007). So far I have looked at decisions given in July and Aug 2007. They would be roughly about 210 cases. Out of these, Penalty was obviously due in 84 cases. This does not include cases where information was given after a lot of delay or where information was denied on flimsy grounds. And out of these 84 cases penalty was imposed only in 1 solitary case. Even interpreting the act leniently the penalising percentage is just at 1%. How will the act survive. That too in most of these 84 cases, the commission itself, has issued a Show Cause Notice. But they have simply not followed them up. So the commission feels that fine should be imposed. But have not taken the necessary steps. I really dont think that this percentage would have improved by the end of looking at all the decisions of the 6 months. This process will be over in another 2 days' time. Once that is done, I intend to talk to Nity and Ossie of HRF and go with them to meet the commissioner urging him to impose fines whenever it is due.
A friend Kabilan had told me that he had contacts with a person in Doordarshan and that he will talk to that lady and tell me. So once that happens there will be some progress on the DD program. The BIG FM radio program continued and this week too. We took three callers, and all of them had problems with their ration card. The sunday awareness session in Tiruthani was postponed due to my health. A person from a consumer protection group Dilli Babu had called me up saying he wanted training for RTI for his group. Meanwhile he personally wanted to learn RTI and so he came home. I trained him about RTI.
Working with the commission
Keen on going ahead with putting pressure on the Commission, I am looking at decisions of about 6 months (Jul 2007 - Dec 2007). So far I have looked at decisions given in July and Aug 2007. They would be roughly about 210 cases. Out of these, Penalty was obviously due in 84 cases. This does not include cases where information was given after a lot of delay or where information was denied on flimsy grounds. And out of these 84 cases penalty was imposed only in 1 solitary case. Even interpreting the act leniently the penalising percentage is just at 1%. How will the act survive. That too in most of these 84 cases, the commission itself, has issued a Show Cause Notice. But they have simply not followed them up. So the commission feels that fine should be imposed. But have not taken the necessary steps. I really dont think that this percentage would have improved by the end of looking at all the decisions of the 6 months. This process will be over in another 2 days' time. Once that is done, I intend to talk to Nity and Ossie of HRF and go with them to meet the commissioner urging him to impose fines whenever it is due.
1 comment:
Well done Madhav,
Keep it up. Your updates are very useful to RTI users. An understanding of the approaches of the commission to individual issues, gives us an idea as to how to draft rti applications and rti appeal letters.
Best wishes
Latelearner
Post a Comment