Punjab Information Commission (PSIC) would soon start video conferencing to end the woes of RTI activists and Public Information Officers

Commissioner, Punjab Information Commission (PSIC), Darbara Singh Kahlon has said the commission will urge the government for more powers to penalise the officers for not implementing Section 4 of the RTI Act, 2005. He said the Commission would soon start video conferencing to end the woes of RTI activists and Public Information Officers (PIO) to visit Chandigarh for the hearing of cases at State Information Commission.

Kahlon said as most of PIOs are not following the Section 4 of the RTI Act, it increases our load. The Section 4 of the RTI Act says every public authority shall maintain all its records duly catalogued and indexed in a manner and the form which facilitates the right to information under this Act and ensure that all records that are appropriate to be computerised are, within a reasonable time and subject to the availability of resources, computerised and connected through a network all over the country on different systems so that access to such records is facilitated.

Most of the government departments have failed to put the information on Internet and websites of the department. He said the Commission would soon introduce video conferencing to connect districts with the state information commission. Kahlon asked the PIO officers to implement the act in letter and spirit. He said the commission would tolerate any ambiguity in the implementation of the act.

DC Rahul Tewari, ADC Kuldip Singh, Davinder Singh ADC (D), SP Gurpreet Singh Toor, SDM Prem Chand and other officers were also present at the seminar.