Shillong, June 14: Tura MDC Bernard Marak has said the RTI Act is being violated by many government departments.
In a statement issued on Friday, Marak said that many departments had refused to furnish information to the RTI queries filed in February which is a gross violation of the RTI Act. “Some Community and Rural Development Blocks and departments where projects were taken up by the government under various flagship programmes such as IBDLP and others refused to furnish any information on various RTI queries filed in the district. “One such question which IBDLP was asked the second time and refused to furnish information was the list of beneficiaries who availed the FOCUS scheme which was released to the voters just before the 2023 election. I was informed by an insider that the bureaucrat officers who are looking after these programmes directed the district officials not to provide the information. If that is the attitude of the bureaucrats then, there is terribly big scam involved in these projects. Apart from that, some of the departments gave vague reply while others gave unclear copies of their replies in spite of asking the information specially in an electronic format”, Matak said.
The response to the RTI queries was not satisfactory and many departments also refused to furnish the details of the beneficiaries and their contact numbers. “If the officers do not furnish the RTI queries in next ten days, we will be forced to take legal steps and we will take it up to the court if necessary. Deputy Commissioners should also be held responsible because the RTI queries were filed through them because the departments so often don’t take RTI applications seriously”, he said.
“There is lack of transparency in many departments and their refusal to furnish detailed information is evident enough that they do not want to divulge the facts sought through RTI”, Marak said.
