Wednesday, May 12, 2010 at 11:55:17 PM
A fine of Rs 26,57651 was imposed last year on government officials by Maharashtra State Information Commission (SIC) for their failure to provide satisfactory responses and even any reply to RTI applications.
However, the use of RTI Act is gaining ground rapidly in Maharashtra, and the state is in the forefront of sourcing information by availing of the provisions of the transparency act.
In 2009 alone 4,40,728 RTI queries were received by various authorities in the state. This is more than the number of RTI applications received by various bodies under the central government.
Last year the central government bodies received about 350,000 lakh applications. The SIC had revealed the data about RTI in its annual report recently.
As per this report, the Urban Development department has received the highest number of RTI applications. It received 1,25,418 RTI applications. Of these 1,20,832 applications received a response and 855 were rejected. The department has 13,965 applications pending.
As Maharashtra is the top-ranking state in terms of urbanisation in the country, it boasts of high urban-related activities, investments and development work. This partly explains why the Urban Development department has attracted the largest share of RTI queries in the state.
Other departments that received a high number of RTI queries were the Revenue Department, the Home Department and the Rural Development Department. They received 72,393, 45,000 and 43,000 applications respectively.
TOPS NATIONAL CHARTS
The SIC report indicates that Maharashtra leads other states in the country in the number of RTI applications.
About 90% of the RTI applications received in the state were cleared, as per the report. Information was provided to 4,39,061 applicants in 2009.
Hearing through Videoconferencing
To ensure that applications and appeals are resolved without any delay, the SIC has introduced videoconferencing. In Pune region SIC has cleared 274 cases through videoconferencing.
While 390 cases were resolved in Aurangabad region through this facility, 173 and 76 cases cases were settled by way of videoconferencing in Nagpur and Amravati regions respectively
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