Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Sept 1: Agitated over the fast collapsing Right to Information in the State, Panthers Party activists spearheaded by Harshdev Singh chairman JKNPP and Yash Paul Kundal State president Young Panthers staged a protest demonstration at Exhibition Ground here today.
The NPP activists assembled near Press Club in the morning and started protest demonstration. They were raising slogans against the Govt and the Administration.
Harshdev while addressing the media held the BJP-PDP responsible for making the progressive RTI Act in the State almost defunct. He divulged that out of the three members of State Information Commission (SIC), two including CIC had retired months back and the lone Information Commissioner was due to retire this month or so but the Government had remained apathetic to initiate any process for reconstitution of the said SIC. He said that SIC was in doldrums as as a single Information Commissioner for the entire state only made a mockery of the SIC.
Admonishing the laidback attitude shown by the bureaucrats and other Government functionaries towards the RTI Act in the absence of stern punitive measures, Mr Singh said that there was plethora of examples to highlight the contemptuous disregard of the RTI applications of information seekers by the said officers. He revealed that it had become a routine affair where the higher authorities and Administrative department had been forwarding the RTI applications to hundreds of their subordinates merely to create confusion and abdicate their responsibility to provide the information. He said that vague and absurd replies were being given in several others cases only to evade, avoid and conceal the information.
Mr Kundal while rebuking the hollow slogans of the Coalition Government of good governance, transparency and accountability, observed that the solitary powerful legislation against corruption was being sabotaged by the Government itself. He said that the Government apart from paying no heed to the structural shortcomings in the Act and its execution had also allowed vested interests and regressive elements to defeat the purpose and essence of the very strong law against the varied malpractices.
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