RTI applicants allege delayed replies; harassment by authorities

After every short interval comes a time when RTI applicants get replies from public authorities that further delay information that they are entitled to get from authorities in a time bound manner.

There are another such set of replies that have come to the fore that range from RTI applications not being responded for lack of postal stamps, application transferred from one desk to another but fails to reach the one that has information, application returned as applicant did not provide proper address, too much time taken to transfer application from one desk to another and raising issues of taxes that are not there in the RTI Act.

An application was not responded to because the Mumbai police did not have the postal stamp required to reply. This, when the first option listed for information to be sent to an applicant was email and not by speed post.

“In my case they returned the RTI application saying that the postal address of the Kalyan Dombivali Municipal Corporation is not proper. I had addressed it to the public information officer of the department it was to be sent it to. Never has this happened when RTI application was sent to other authorities,” said Sanjay …read more