Govt is duty bound to provide info under RTI Ac

NEW DELHI: The government is duty-bound to provide information sought by any citizen of the country under the Right To Information (RTI) Act 2005, except those which cannot be disclosed, the Chief Information Commissioner said on Tuesday.

"The government should make information available sought by a citizen barring those under Section 8 of the RTI, which states that certain information cannot be disclosed," Wajahat Habibullah said at a seminar on RTI organised by the Standing Conference of Public Enterprises (SCOPE).

He asked the PSUs to make full use of India's IT potential and digital records, introduce maintenance and management systems to deal with information requests from the citizens. The PSEs should put 17 categories of information as required by the provisions of the Act to enable the citizens to access it, he said.

Habibullah emphasised the TRI Act was underpinned by two very important principles - transparency and accountability. It has further strengthened the process of democratic decentralisation by institutionalising the mechanism for peoples' participation in governance.

Joint Secretary Department of Public Enterprises K D Tripathi said the PSUs have been facilitating information sought by anyone under the RTI, besides the fact that they were answerable to the Parliament. He reasoned that the TRI Act would not jeoprdise the interest of the Central PSEs and it would ensure good corporate governance among them.

Director General SCOPE S M Dewan said PSUs need to have some scope on witholding certain information as they had to compete nationally and globally. Disseminating such information could put them at a disadvantage, he said.