Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Mar 17: In the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking establishment of online RTI request portal for the purposes of collecting information from any department of the Government, Division Bench of High Court comprising Chief Justice Pankaj Mithal and Justice Sindhu Sharma has directed the Chief Secretary to take a call upon the representation of the petitioners and pass a speaking order on it, most expeditiously, preferably, within a period of three months from the date a copy of this order is produced before him.
While disposing of the PIL, the DB said, “it will be open for the petitioners to make a fresh comprehensive representation in line with the representation already made so as to request the Chief Secretary to provide the facility of online RTI Portal”.
In the PIL, petitioners have submitted that the Central Government has already requested all the States/Union Territory Governments to enable the citizens to file online applications for collecting information from the various departments. The petitioners have made various representations in this regard but no action has been taken and the online RTI Portal facility is not being made available to the citizens.
The last of the representation in this regard was submitted by the petitioners on 12.12.2021 to the Chief Secretary, Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.