Leader of Opposition in Telangana Council Mohammed Ali Shabbir today charged the TRS government with “deliberately” paralyzing the institution of Telangana Information Commission, which was the custodian of the people’s democratic weapon — RTI (Right to Information).
Shabbir Ali accused the Telangana government of failing to provide latest updates as part of the universal open data to citizens policy on its portals making the citizens to run from pillar to post for GOs and other government orders as over 90 percent of the websites of government portal are not regularly updated and people are in the dark about functioning of the government ‘.
In a pressnote here today, Shabbir said Chief Minister KCR, who was scared of exposures and disliked anyone questioning his ‘Farmans’ (diktat) in public domain had not made any appointments of the institution of Information Commissioners. ‘Virtually, the Information Commissioner’s office (Telangana Information Commission) is empty since last few months after the term of last incumbent expired and no new appointments were made’, he said.
The LOP said the appointment of four Information Commissioners — V Venkateswarlu, Imtiaz Ahmed, Lam Tantiya Kumari and M Vijaya Nirmala were set aside by the High court in April last. On April 24, the in charge Chief Information Commissioner Ratan also put down office after his superannuation of service The term of Information Commissioner Vijay Kumar also completed on May 15. The Telangana Government had not honored a direction from the High court after an appeal for immediate appointment of Information commissioners within six weeks’, he said.
The LOP said the Telangana Govt boasted of topping the country in IT adaptations in administration and citizen services and gave high voltage publicity of its deploying IT initiatives in serving the people . But in fact as on today most of the departments including Finance Dept, has not updated on the official portal of the TS government .Sri Shabbir said that the open data policy of the centre had been unveiled in 2016 TS government amidst fanfare and publicity blitzkrieg to announce appointment of an expert committee to hoist its policy initiatives through its websitewww.data.telangana.gov.in . The entire campaign was to implement the RTI launched in 2005 by the UPA govt to spread awareness among voters and citizen on services provided by government’, he said.
He said day in and day out the IT minister KTR went to town boasting about the IT in Government services but in reality most of the govt websites were non-functional and still carried obsolete information and outdated data . ‘ The TRS govt and CM KCR had violated and watered down the aspirations and goals of the Information Act ushered by the UPA govt in 2005 ( u/s 4(2),sub section 1(b) of the Act) ‘ he added. (NSS)