Mangalore, June 14: Even though our country stands 86th in the list of least corrupted countries, the menace will soon witness elimination thanks to the RTI Act which has opened the window for accountability of the Government, said Dr. Sairam Bhat, Associate Professor, National law School of India University.
He was speaking on special training programme on 'Improving Transparency and Accountability in Government through Effective Implementation of RTI Act 2005', conducted by Administrative Training Institute, Government of Karnataka, at Zilla Panchayat Hall, here on Tuesday.
While providing a brief picture on history of RTI Act he said during British rule there was an act named Official Secrets Act, 1923, which had 2 obligations that no government secrets could be disclosed to public and government servants had discretionary power to designate any documents as secret. So till 2005 no changes were made in that existing act. But later when RTI Act was introduced all the obligations of Official Secrets Act were eliminated and as a result now every individual has a right to access all the government information without any discrimination of cast, state, religion.
Right to Information (RTI) Act 2005, applies to all states, central and local government respectively. While speaking on procedure to seek information he told that, section 2(h) of Indian Constitution states that all organizations, companies which are owned by government are called as Public Authority and every citizen of country can obtain any information from these authorities and they are entitled to provide information. Companies which have 51% share from government also come under public authority. He also said that Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is the only sports federation excluded from Public Authority.
Robinson D'souza, Retd. Secretary to Govt. Law department, Bangalore, spoke on Handling of RTI application and its disposal within time frame. He also produced some case studies related to RTI Act 2005.
Prabhulinga Kavalakatte, Assistant Commissioner, Sitamma, project officer, K. R Prasad, ATI, Faculty were present for inaugural function.
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