Soon Get RTI status through phone or Online
By August, the State Information Commission (SIC) plans to introduce the option for applicants to check the status of their RTI application through SMS and through the SIC website. Pointing out that this would spare applicants the effort of making a visit to the commission in person to enquire about the status, Sripathi added that the SIC was also working on organizing its files with an efficient retrieval system now in place and trained personnel to handle files dating back three years.
This would promote greater transparency and help individuals who have sought information under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. Set to be implemented in phases, the new software that is being procured from the National Informatics Centre (NIC) for this purpose is likely to be put through a trial run starting July 15, state chief information commissioner K S Sripathi. “Our original target was to bring this into effect in June but there was a delay as NIC was sorting out a few issues with the software. We are hoping to do a trial run of people calling by phone to check the status of their application starting July 15,” he said.
RTI applicants say that the commission has come a long way in the last year. “About eight months ago, the commission did not even put up copies of its orders online or maintain a record of the number of cases that were received every month. This system can be used by applicants to file RTI applications every month just to find out the status of their original application. Otherwise, they would have no idea what happened to their original application,” said V Madhav, an RTI activist.
Other activists such as V Gopalakrishnan concur with the observation. “This move will help people from the districts get access to information. For instance, if a person has filed an RTI query from Kanyakumari, he or she need not come all the way to Chennai to enquire about the status of his application,” he said.
Check the status of their RTI application, Chennai, Chennai RTI Status, Chennai RTI status Online, file RTI application, National Informatics Centre, RTI Act, State Information Commission
