KCR Has Paralysed Information Commission: Congress

Leader Of Opposition in the Telangana Legislative Council Mohammed Ali Shabbir today charged the TRS government with "deliberately" paralyzing the institution of Telangana Information Commission, which was the custodian of the people's democratic weapon - RTI (Right to Information).

Shabbir Ali accused the Telangana government of failing to provide the latest updates which went against its "universal open data to citizens" policy on its portals, making the citizens run from pillar to post for GOs and other government orders. Over 90% of the websites of the government were not being regularly updated, and people were therefore in the dark about the functioning of the government, he claimed.

To ensure that people could not get information through the RTI route either, Shabbir Ali said that Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, who was scared of exposures and disliked anyone questioning his "farmans" (orders) in the public domain, had not made any appointments to the posts of Information Commissioners.

"The office of the Telangana Information Commission has been virtually empty since the last few months after the term of the last incumbents expired, and no new appointments have been made," he said.

Shabbir Ali said that the appointments of four Information Commissioners - V Venkateswarlu, Imtiaz Ahmed, Lam Tantiya Kumari and M Vijaya Nirmala - were set aside by the High court in April last. On April 24, the in-charge Chief Information Commissioner Ratan also demitted office upon superannuation, and the term of Information Commissioner Vijay Kumar expired on May 15. The Telangana government had not honored a directive from the High Court after an appeal, for immediate appointment of Information Commissioners within six weeks, he said.

The LOP said the Telangana government boasted of topping the country in IT adoption in administration and citizen services, and gave high voltage publicity of its deploying IT initiatives in serving the people. But the fact was that as on today most of the departments including the finance department had not updated their affairs/orders on the official portal of the government.

The TRS govt and CM KCR had violated and watered down the aspirations and goals of the Right To Information Act ushered in by the UPA government in 2005, he said.