Hyderabad: State Chief Information Commissioner Chandrasekhar Reddy urged Public Information Officers to avoid dismissing applications without valid justification.
RTI Commissioners Desham Bhupal, B Ayodhya Reddy, PV Srinivas Rao, Mohsin Parveen, and Merla Vaishnavi visited Medak district for a meeting with officials on Tuesday.
Reddy emphasized that the RTI Act aims to ensure officers fully understand the law, government schemes, fund usage, and corruption elimination. Officers should study the act thoroughly. Notably, 15 of the 29 government departments have no pending cases. However, 18,000 cases are still unresolved due to inaccessible information over the past decade. Public Information Officers must provide information within 30 days, and citizen charter boards should be established in every government office. Applications should not be rejected without a sound reason, Reddy insisted.
The RTI Chief Commissioner promised to address all pending cases by August and focus on new applications. Plans are underway to clear cases from 30 departments within two months, aiming for zero backlog. Eleven districts have been selected to enhance officer awareness of the RTI Act, with detailed explanations of its sections. Seventeen departments across 22 districts aim to resolve all issues by next March. The awareness conference aims to rejuvenate the system and boost accountability to the public.
