Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Nov 12: Concerned over the fast collapsing RTI apparatus in the State, Panthers Party activists today held a strong protest demonstration and alleged sabotaging of the RTI Act in J&K by the State Government.
Led by Harshdev Singh, chairman JKNPP and Yash Paul Kundal, State president Young Panthers, the JKNPP activists raised slogans against the Government and also torched an effigy of the ruling coalition partner BJP.
Harshdev Singh, while addressing the gathering, squarely 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 Commis-sioner was due to retire this month but the Government had remained apathetic to initiate any process for reconstitution of the said SIC. “The Coalition Government is hell bent to kill the transparency law for its vested interests,” he alleged.
Rebuking the hollow slogans of the coalition Government of good governance, transparency and accountability, Singh 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. “The common masses including aggrieved and disadvantaged sections had pinned high hopes with the enactment of the RTI Act but utter lack of accountability in the present dispensation and extremely in-effective RTI mechanism in the State have dashed all their hopes,” he added.
Singh said that there was plethora of examples to highlight the contemptuous disregard of the RTI applications of information seekers by the 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.
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