RTI implementation satisfactory: official

The overall implementation of the Right to Information Act, considering that it has come into force barely five years ago and in comparison to such people-friendly Acts, is quite satisfactory, Central Information Commissioner Satyananda Mishra has said.

“It's most discussed about, people are concerned about it and there is a fairly good degree of awareness about the Act,” he told The Hindu here on Sunday.

With regard to compliance, he said the Central Government departments, public sector undertakings and banks were to keep 17 types of data about their organisation on the website within 120 days of the Act coming into force. Though everybody had done it, quite a few have not done it the way it should have been, Mr. Mishra said.

The information was updated now and then in the absence of a monitoring mechanism. Now, they had done it.

But the updating should be automatic through an institutional arrangement.

Besides, depending upon the size of public authority, it should have information officers, Mr. Mishra opined.

The number of information officers is not large enough to cater to the needs of everybody.