Kohima, October 8 (MExN): While Government department should take legal action against RTI applicants who misuse the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005 to blackmail and extort money for personal gains; any department that feels threatened “is not clean and transparent in their functions,” the Nagaland Voluntary Consumers’ Organisation (NVCO) said on Saturday.
In a press release, the NVCO which is celebrating RTI Week from October 5 to 12, stated that the recent statement by Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) Nagaland, I Meyionen Jamir, regarding alleged misuse of RTI in the state, “must be true but it has also hurt the sentiment of reasonable RTI applicants/activists.”
According to the NVCO, while the CIC stated that people have used the Act for personal gain and it has become a ‘lucrative business,’ even to the extent of threatening the departments with ‘exposure’ and thereby extorting money to the tune of several lakh; the official “contradict himself by appealing the people to make use of RTI to ‘expose’ the wrongdoers in the Government departments.”
It pointed out that Jamir’s statement “must be true” but it also hurts the sentiments of honest RTI applicants/activists who have had ‘success stories’ and were able to “bring out huge number of backdoor appointments, misuse of public funds, nepotism, various schemes meant for rural people and BPL, favouritism, fraudulent drawal of public funds, not following the norms/rules/laws, various indulgence of corruption on the function of the Government, etc.”
We cannot afford to discourage the reasonable RTI groups/applicants/activists at this juncture where rate of corruption is high in the state, it said.
It advised the departments to take legal action upon any RTI applicant/activist found misusing RTI. As per RTI Act it is the duty of the PIO/APIO to furnish all demanded documents/information within the time frame and in case of any RTI group/applicant demanded/extorting money taking advantage of RTI application then the department can even lodged an FIR and immediately arrest them/him/her. However, if the department fears the threat of exposure then “the department is not clean and transparent in their functions,” it underscored.
