Tamil Nadu Govt to fast track clearance of RTI queries on school issues

The State government decision follows the piling up of several thousand applications in various wings of the School Education Department. At present, the first response of RTI will be given 30 days from the date of receipt of the appeal. However, the appellate authority could extend this by another 15 days for reasons to be recorded in writing. The State Education wing is one of the government departments that receive a large number of RTI petitions.

A senior official from the School Education Department, seeking anonymity, told DT Next that about 90 per cent of RTI petitions were coming from government school teachers and various teaching associations with regard to promotions and other school-related issues.

He said the authorities dealing with RTI applications were instructed to use online facilities to get the details for the petitions and dispose of them accordingly.

“However, at present, the government orders, circulars, notifications, statistics, and reports are not fully updated in School Education Department related websites, which was exclusively used by the authorities,” he said adding “now, the authorities concerned were instructed that all the information should be updated on the portals.

The official said once an RTI application was received, it has to be immediately passed on to the authority to get the reply after verifying the genuineness of the petition.

“It has also been instructed that the petitioners should not appeal to the State Information Commission if they do not get a reply from the appellate authority within the time limit,” he added.

Stating that applications with irrelevant queries should be rejected immediately, he said “a proper online RTI petitions list will also be maintained for any future verifications, which might be asked by the higher authorities”.