RTI activists up in arms ‘With Chairs’ ‘ For a CHAIR’.

'कुर्सी' के लिए’ 'कुर्सी' के साथ’ लखनऊ में  धरना देंगे  आरटीआई कार्यकर्ता l 

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.

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