Non-compliance with the RTI Act may lead to officials losing promotion
7 Nov, 2013On demand of all the members of Kerala State Information Commission, especially with growing number of cases of non-compliance with the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the state government has mooted the proposal of revising the Manual of Office Procedure (MOP). Further, the training manual for in house training is also to under changes under the guidance of General Administration Department. It is expected that the whole process will be completed within two months time and from then onwards both the training and refresher courses will comprise of sessions on RTI.
Till date, the errant officials have only been fined upto Rs. 25000/-, which proved to be inadequate as a deterrent. It has been claimed that the amount used to be paid by the beneficiaries on behalf of the corrupt officials and the amount proved to be too meagre a sum for the so called beneficiaries. As per the revised MOP, along with the fine the senior officers and the appellate authorities will be empowered to make confidential adverse entries in the service book of the concerned officer and thus could prove to be a basis of denying both promotion as well as increments. The Information Commissioner M.N. Gunavardhan has said that such an action will force officials to act in accordance of true spirit of law.