The Brave Pedestrian

  1) A good RTI application as boring as a laundry list. It is a bare list of items of information WITHOUT ANY reasoning. If the first draft of RTI application is interesting to read, something is wrong. Make corrections by deleting the interesting material, such as logical threads of reasoning and justification. You must focus on how to draft an RTI application that DOES NOT disclose the overall nature of the problem in your mind. It must not give a glimpse of what you intend to do with the requested information e.g. register police complaints, approach investigating agencies, file a PIL etc. Also, your RTI application must not indicate how badly you want the information, and therefore, please don’t mention anything such as “I am a senior citizen dependent on my pension cheques, and I have been pushed from pillar-to-post in search of this information.” When you write an RTI application, you must try to gain only information, and not sympathy, respect etc. ...

Quite often, people feel guilty and try to explain why they want a particular piece of information. Some people write a covering letter for their RTI application explaining their grievances and how getting the information will help them. Others explain that they are collecting information for their doctoral thesis or newspaper article. Still others try to impress the PIO by writing that they are relatives of a Member of Parliament, or the president of some association or trade union. All that is unnecessary. Section 6(2) clearly says: An applicant making request for information shall not be required to give any reason or any other personal details except those that necessary for contacting him. So, whether you are drafting your RTI application, speaking to a PIO or any Appellate Authority, remember: you need not disclose the purpose for which you want the information, or any additional details about yourself. Your name and contract details is all that anybod...

In case the requested documents are denied to you under sections 8, 9 or 11, and the PIO and appellate authorities refuse to budge, what to do? The answer is: Take whatever documents you can get, after severing off the documents (or parts thereof) to which the above-mentioned sections apply. Section 10: (1) Where a request for access to information is rejected on the ground that it is exempt from disclosure, access may be provided to that part of the record which does not contain any information which is exempt from disclosure and which can reasonably be severed from any part that contains exempt information . (2) Where access is granted to a part of the record under sub-section (1) the PIO shall give a notice to the applicant, informing — that only part of the record requested, after severance of the record containing information which is exempt from disclosure, is being provided; the reasons for the decision, including any findings on any material question ...

 From which organizations can you demand RTI info? A wide variety of offices of government and administration, PSUs, and some privately owned and run bodies also, are covered under the RTI Act 2005. You have the right to demand information from any body that is covered under the definition of “public authority” under RTI Act. Your RTI application has to be addressed to “The Public Information Officer, [Name of Public Authority, Postal Address of Postal Authority.]” For example, if you want some information from Kasturba Marg police station, your RTI application should say, “To the Public Information Officer, Kasturba Cross Road Number 1, Chinchpada, Borivali East, Mumbai, Maharashtra 400066.” The beauty of RTI Act is that you don’t even have to know the name of the Public Information Officer, or the name of the office about which you need information. You only need commonsense and the information that is easily available on the internet. For example, you can file RTI app...

Unknown to most litigants, judges exercise both judicial and managerial powers in their courts. Currently, courts & their infrastructure and manpower resources are grossly mismanaged, and the result is seen as huge pendencies, endless tareekh pe tareekh, mishandling of court records, etc. For assisting judges by taking over court management functions, many states have recently appointed qualified COURT MANAGERS (MBAs) with salaries of Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh per month. (Read t his to get an idea of their service conditions and functions:  http://www.allahabadhighcourt.in/…/court_manager_16-04-12.p… But sadly, the judges and their clerical staff have responded very negatively to this scheme. Rather than delegating functions to court managers, and using them to save time and improve their own effectiveness, judges and their staff are doing their best to demoralize and demotivate the court managers, and render them ineffective, so that this scheme may be scrapped within a ...