GUWAHATI, Sept 21 - Despite a decade of the Right to Information Act, the habit of updated information on Government websites is not picking up in Assam. The State Chief Information Commissioner Himangshu Sekhar Das today acknowledged that updated Government websites would considerably lessen the burden of RTI applications.
�We are taking up with the Government to activate Section 4 of the RTI Act. The Commission would urge the State Government to instruct its departments to keep their websites updated,� he said, addressing the media.
Section 4 of the Act says that every public authority should maintain all its records duly catalogued and indexed in a manner which facilitates the right to information and ensure that all records that are appropriate to be computerised are done so and connected through a network all over the country.
In the past 10 years, the Commission has received nearly 11,000 applications, of which 5,826 are pending.
Stressing that in a decade, awareness about the Act has increased among the people, he said that the State receives maximum queries about the Department of Panchayat and Rural Development and Food and Civil Supplies followed by departments of Education, Revenue, Forest, Social Welfare and Agriculture.
�16 per cent of the RTI cases are related to redressal of grievances rather than seeking information. It indicates that the RTI is being used effectively as a tool of addressing the grievances,� he said, disclosing some of the plans to bring more efficiency and swiftness in the process of seeking and providing information thus increasing transparency and accountability.
