Two undergraduate law students in Lucknow conducted an exhaustive survey of 63 government departments in order to assess the status of implementation of the Right to Information Act, 2005, in Uttar Pradesh and found the experience “horrifying”.
Pooja Tripathi and Vriti Upadhyay, the two students, conducted the survey as part of an ongoing movement to highlight the shortcomings in the implementation of the RTI Act in the state.
The survey included visiting various government offices in the state capital and filing an RTI application with the public information officer (PIO).
Some of the offices visited were the rural development department, the Lucknow Development Authority, the Board of Revenue, the minorities welfare department, the Public Works Department, office of the district magistrate, the food and civil supplies department, among several others.
Pooja and Vriti, while talking to reporters, said that they found several public information officers (PIO) and other officials “rude and uncooperative”.
In many departments, there was no name-plate or board by which the officer designated as the PIO could be identified. The PIOs, often, gave misleading information about how to file their application,” the students said.
In the minorities welfare directorate and the pension directorate offices, there was no information about the availability of PIOs.
Their application was not accepted and they were asked to send it by post at the Minorities Commission office but at the Shia Central Waqf Board office, they were able to file the application without much trouble though the officials quizzed them about the motive behind filing the RTI application.
There was no PIO at the panchayati raj accounts office and in the department for food and civil supplies, the State Pollution Control Board, the prisons directorate and the State Highways Authority offices, the PIOs were not present.
The only positive experience that the two students had was in the women’s welfare department, the principal forest conservator’s office, the state library office and the groundwater department, where their applications were accepted easily without any resistance.
The students told reporters that the overall experience was that there is a great deal of resistance that one has to face while seeking queries under the RTI in Uttar Pradesh.