RTI Stories

The following stories related to RTI in Uttaranchal have been posted by the users

Please read the success stories posted by our users:

Submitted by S P MAMGAIN

I approached PIO of Uttarakhand Power Corporation on 1/6/2009 at their corporate office at Dehradun to file RTI application. On refusal to receive application fee in cash by the PIO, complaint was filed before State Information Commission Dehradun, registered as Complaint No.2225/2009-10.

I received copy of notice fixing date 15/07/2009, i.e. for today at 11:30 Hrs. In the expectation of complaint to be heard at the time fixed I got seated at 11:30 at the hearing room of CIC. After long await I could only understand that the time notified in the notice of 11:30 has no relevance and my complaint may be heard in due course of the day as usually happens in case of court hearings. (Which ultimately came for hearing at 3:30 PM) The first thing came to mind that if State Information Commissions function like civil courts as to keep appellants/complainants waiting for the whole day then one day people will refrain from approaching the commissions as by the end of day it will appear to punish own self rather than taking to task the public authorities at fault.

I had an opportunity to appear before Central Information Commission New Delhi, where the parties are notified by the approximate time of hearing in the day and not one common time for all the cases, which is highly appreciable.

State Commissions must amend their self procedure to achieve the ultimate object of RTI Act.

Surprisingly the officer(PIO) complained against was well aware of late hearing of the matter and just devoted his minimum time by reaching the Information Commission at the nick of time in his official car showing how privileged they are as against ordinary citizens.

The system of enquiry in complaint matters, by not giving opportunity to complaint to submit his view point on the submissions/ reply filed by PIO complaint against is also against natural justice which also happened in my case ultimately and the PIO went away scot free after arguing all his self praise.

Submitted by Amit Pandeya

I had applied for information under RTI in the month of july 2006 here in Dehradun asking for the following :1) what action had been and is being taken against buildings(commercial usage,private,shopping malls,cinema halls, government building etc) voilating all fire safety norms..and how many have been given Fire safety Complaince certificate.......'believe it or not' only six (6) buildings in the whole city of Dehradun have been issued this Clearance Certificate for complying with the fire safety norms, that even under the SARAI ACT..dated many many years ago!!All thos six listed building are small restraunts, small motels...Imagine what sort of goverance is going on in the state capital...even after the recent Meerut fire incident where hundreds of people lost their lives......and here our Honourable Chief minister along with senior officails and memebers of state assembly go abroad frequently for study tours at the tax-payers expense to study how to improve the state of affairs in our country/state, but fail to do basic governance in their own backyards....I plan to appeal to the commission...otherwise the fire safet chief of Dehradun city will continue to look the other way till hundreds of people are killed in an inferno!Amit PandeyaDehradun