RTI now extended to 6 depts in Tamil Nadu

Nearly two years after the State government issued a GO to launch the trial run of the online Right to Information (RTI) portal for filing petitions in the Personnel and Administrative Reforms (P&AR) Department, the portal — rtionline.tn.gov.in — has started accepting petitions of five other departments including that of School Education.

Now, the public could file RTI petitions and first appeals related to School Education, Health and Family Welfare, Municipal Administration and Water Supply, Revenue and Disaster Management and Rural Development and Panchayati Raj along with Human Resources Management Department at the Secretariat.

However, the RTI activists expressed anguish over the State government limiting the online RTI portal to a few Secretariat departments alone when several states including Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra launched a full-fledged website years ago.

The government order of the P&AR Department on April 29, 2020, said that a “trial run of the software for filing petitions will be conducted in the P&R department. After ascertaining the performance, a pilot run will be conducted in a major department.”

RTI activist V Gopalakrishnan said when he checked the portal on Friday, it started accepting the RTI petitions and the first appeal for five other departments at Secretariat other than Human Resources Management. “Government should not limit the online facility to the six departments alone. It should be extended to all the departments,” he said.

He urged the government to do away with the bank charges for the payment of the RTI application fee of Rs 10. “To pay a fee of Rs 10, the petitioner has to pay Rs 6 if the payment was made through non-SBI internet banking. For credit cards, one has to pay a charge of Rs 12. Only Rupay cards debit cards (non-SBI) are accepted,” he said, adding the portal has no facility for registered users like in the Union government’s RTI portal.

FACT India general secretary C Selveraj wondered what was the problem in extending the portal to all government departments. He alleged that ordinary people could not use the portal as it is not user friendly.

A senior government official said soon the RTI portal would be expanded to cover all the departments. The addition of the five major departments was a step in that direction, the official said.