The Government has recently constituted a Special Task Force to ensure effective implementation of the Right to Information Act (RTI Act) and to bring in more transparency and accountability in governance. The task force is mandated to seek ways for effective implementation of Section 4 of the RTI Act.
In this regard, Infocracy India, an initiative to further democracy by access to ‘free, open and abundant’ information conducted a survey to check if law schools are adhering to the RTI Act and concluded that most of the law colleges are not complying with the law.
Section 4 of the RTI Act stipulates that every public authority shall catalogue, index & facilitate access to its records and ensure that online access to such information is facilitated (subject to availability of resources).
Also, every public authority is duty bound to proactively disclose the information provided under the heads mentioned under Section 4 (1)(b). This had to be published within 120 days of the date of enactment of this Act.
Even our best law universities have a poor record on this. The Section 4 came into force on June 15, 2005 and the information should have been disclosed within 120 days, by October 15, 2005. It seems that we are six years late.
