Modi govt's 13% ministries, 6% departments comply by Cabinet Secretariat's RTI transparency directive

Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions Jitendra Singh has admitted in the Rajya Sabha that the Government of India has “no mechanism” to monitor compliance with its own transparency directive, requiring each ministry and department to submit monthly report to the Cabinet Secretariat on proactive disclosures to be made under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005.
Singh said this in reply to an unstarred query regarding the April 2016 Central Information Commission (CIC) directive to the Cabinet Secretariat to upload monthly reports of work done by all Ministries and Departments on their respective websites. Two months later, the Cabinet Secretariat issued a circular to all Central Ministries and Departments requiring them to upload the monthly reports.
Meanwhile, the Delhi-based advocacy group Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), which works on RTI issues, has said that its “quick website check” of 52 Central Ministries and as many Departments reveals that only 13% of the Ministries and 5.7% of 52 Departments are compliant with the transparency directive by publishing monthly reports up to December 2017.
If the Ministries and Departments that have their own websites are counted, the compliance rate for Ministries goes up to 14.89% and 6.5%, respectively, says CHRI’s Venkatesh Nayak in a report based on the quick check.
Nayak says, “Having uploaded all monthly reports up to January 2018, the Ministry of Environment and Forests and Climate Change is the only entity to comply fully with the transparency directive.”
He adds, “Three Ministries, Civil Aviation, Coal and Petroleum and Natural Gas have published monthly reports up to December 2017”, while the Ministry of Finance has published monthly reports “up to November 2017.”
Nayak further reveals, “The Ministry of Home Affairs is also reasonably compliant with the transparency directive having uploaded reports up to December 2017”, though adding, “Monthly reports for May and July 2017 are missing from its website.”
According to Nayak the Ministry of Mines “seems to have stopped publishing monthly reports after February 2017”, while the Ministry for Rural Development appears to have “stopped this practice after July 2016.
Coming to departments, Nayak says, “The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) and of Food and Public Distribution have uploaded all monthly reports up to December 2017.
Also, he says, “The Department of Justice has published all reports for the calendar year of 2017 but seems to have removed reports of previous months.”
However, Nayak regrets, the “Department of Investment and Public Asset Management has published only bullet pointed information for each month.”
Similarly, he says, “the monthly reports of the Department of Pharmaceuticals are published intermittently”, while, the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances “stopped publishing monthly reports after January 2017.”
Comments Nayak, “Section 25(1)(c) of the RTI Act obligates the Central government to require all public authorities under its control to publish accurate information about their activities from time to time. This is a statutory mandate. However, the evidence indicates a deficit of both political and bureaucratic will to ensure compliance with this transparency requirement.”

Comments

Patriot, Link: How Soviet imbroglio post-1968 crucially influenced alternative media platforms

Adatata Narayanan, Aruna Asaf Ali Alternative media, as we know it today in the age of information and communication technology (ICT), didn't exist in the form it does today during or around the time I joined formal journalism at Link Newsweekly as a sub-editor in January 1979. However, Link, and its sister publication Patriot, a daily—both published from Delhi—were known to have provided what could be called an alternative media platform at a time when major Delhi-based dailies were controlled by media barons.

Breaking news? Top Hindu builder ties up with Muslim investor for a huge minority housing society in Ahmedabad

There is a flutter in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur area, derogatorily referred to as the "border" because, on its eastern side, there is a sprawling minority area called Juhapura, where around five lakh Muslims live. The segregation is so stark that virtually no Muslim lives in Vejalpur, populated by around four lakh Hindus, and no Hindu lives in Juhapura.

60 crore in Mahakumbh? It's all hype with an eye on UP polls, asserts keen BJP supporter in Amit Shah's constituency

As the Mahakumbh drew to a close, during my daily walk, I met a veteran BJP supporter—a neighbor with whom we would often share dinner in a group. An amicable person, the first thing he asked me, as he was about to take the lift to his flat, was, "How many people do you think must have participated in the holy dip?" He then stopped by to talk—which we did for a full half-hour, cutting into my walk time.

Morari Bapu echoes misleading figures to support the BJP's anti-conversion agenda

A senior Gujarat activist phoned me today to inform me that the well-known storyteller on Lord Ram, Morari Bapu, has made an "unsubstantiated" and "preposterous" statement in Songadh town, located in the tribal-dominated Tapi district. He claimed that while the Gujarat government wants the Bhagavad Gita to be taught in schools, the "problem is" that 75% of government teachers "are Christians who do not let this happen" and are “involved in religious conversions.”

An untold story? Still elusive: Gujarati language studies on social history of Gujarat's caste and class evolution

This is a follow-up to my earlier blog , where I mentioned that veteran scholar Prof. Ghanshyam Shah has just completed a book for publication on a topic no academic seems to have dealt with—caste and class relations in Gujarat’s social history. He forwarded me a chapter of the book, published as an "Economic & Political Weekly" article last year, which deals with the 2015 Patidar agitation in the context of how this now-powerful caste originated in the Middle Ages and how it has evolved in the post-independence era.

New York-based digital company traces Modi's meteoric rise to global Hindutva ecosystem over several decades

A recent document, released by the Polis Project Inc.—a New York-based digital magazine and hybrid research and journalism organization—even as seeking to highlight the alleged rise of authoritarianism in India, has sought to trace Prime Minister Narendra Modi's meteoric rise since 2014 to the ever-expanding global Hindutva ecosystem over the last several decades.

Caste, class, and Patidar agitation: Veteran academic 'unearths' Gujarat’s social history

Recently, I was talking with a veteran Gujarat-based academic who is the author of several books, including "Social Movements in India: A Review of Literature", "Untouchability in Rural India", "Public Health and Urban Development: The Study of Surat Plague", and "Dalit Identity and Politics", apart from many erudite articles and papers in research and popular journals.

Justifying social divisions? 'Dogs too have caste system like we humans, it's natural'

I have never had any pets, nor am I very comfortable with them. Frankly, I don't know how to play with a pet dog. I just sit quietly whenever I visit someone and see their pet dog trying to lick my feet. While I am told not to worry, I still choose to be a little careful, avoiding touching the pet.

Martyrs’ Day at Sanand: Remembering Vinod Kinariwala amidst politics of remembrance

I was urged by a close relative, considered across my family as a binding force, to attend a grand ceremony on Martyrs' Day, March 23, along with four other relatives. The event, called Veeranjali (homage to martyrs), was to be held in an open space near Sanand town, about 15 kilometers from Ahmedabad. Martyrs' Day has been observed across India since independence, as it was on this day in 1931 that Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, and Rajguru were executed.

Search This Blog