RTI activists up in arms ‘With Chairs’
‘ For a CHAIR’.
Lucknow: Coming Sunday RTI
activists shall stage a demonstration near the Uttar Pradesh State Information
Commission (UPSIC) in Lucknow to protest against the arrest of RTI activist
Siva Elango in Tamilnadu. Activists shall raise a demand that all judicial and
quasi-judicial bodies in the country should offer a chair during proceedings. Members
of various Social Organizations of Uttar Pradesh shall also participate in the protest against the inhumane act of
arrest of Elango.
RTI activist Elango was arrested for taking a seat during a hearing before a
two member bench of chief information commissioner K S Sripathi and commissioner
S F Akbar of Tamil Nadu State Information Commission.
UPSIC has also been
harassing RTI applicants and they are killing the RTI Act. UPSIC too, has even
neglected the basic right of activists to sit during a hearing. Previously IC
Arvind Singh Bisht sent Senior Citizen RTI activist Ashok Kumar Goyal to jail
and very recently same IC misbehaved with another Senior Citizen RTI activist
named Mahendra Agarwal. Activists in Uttar Pradesh are now scared to appear in
appeal proceedings in commissions as they may lodge cases against them.
Activists shall raise
the demand to dismiss all the commissions across the country and reconstitute
them in a transparent manner to ensure that persons of real eminence, intact
integrity and of Humane mindset be seated there because today the only jobs these
commissions are performing are to reject
RTI applications and demoralize RTI applicants by harassing them as the
commissions allow government officials to sit during the hearings, but they
insist RTI applicants to stand till the proceedings ends to demoralize them.
The commissions are going
easy on public information officers (PIOs) who delay and deny information. Though
the commissions should impose a penalty
of up to Rs 25,000 on a PIO for failing to furnish information within 30 days
and for deliberately providing incorrect, incomplete and misleading information
but they are seldom doing it.
In UP activists have long been campaigning against appointments of information
commissions at UPSIC as they all are incapable persons having close connections
with ruling political parties.
Contact 9369613513
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