The Office of the District Educational Officer (DEO) declined the request for information from a Right to Information (RTI) activist, stating its stance against procuring data from other public authorities within its jurisdiction to provide it to the applicant.
RTI activist M. A. Akram sought information on four different administrative aspects connected to government school teachers, including the number of teachers who are currently on long leave.
In what came as a rude shock, the DEO’s office responded by stating that “it is beyond the scope of the Act for a public authority to collect the information from various public authorities to supply it to the applicant”. Mr. Akram was requested to submit applications to the office of the Deputy Educational Officer and Deputy Inspector of Schools that were functioning under the DEO’s office.
“It is very surprising that such a response was sent. There is a provision in the RTI Act by which requests can be forwarded to concerned authorities, and take information from them. This provision has been used several times. The response is not in the interest of transparency,” Mr. Akram said, even as he underscored that at as of now, the Telangana State Information Commission (TSIC) is without information commissioners. “There should be proper monitoring of how various government departments are dealing with RTI applications,” he said.
The RTI activist also sought information about the mandal-wise number of teachers working in the district, the list of schools, medium-wise, operating in Hyderabad, and the number of vacancies in government schools.
In his application, Mr. Akram invoked Article 6 (3) of the Act which provides for the the application to be forwarded to relevant public authorities.
Apart from Mr. Akram, other RTI activists, over the past couple of years, have expressed dissatisfaction with the state of affairs concerning the implementation of the legislation. The claimed that on several occasions, public authorities were indulging in delay tactics. And with no information commissioners, appealing at TSIC would only lead to applications being added to the already long list of pending cases.
In what came across as a pleasant, but short lived surprise, the Telangana government’s online RTI portal went live. However, hours after this, users were greeted with a message requesting them not to use the portal given due issues pertaining to training of public information officers, and others.
