Good News: Indians abroad can now file online RTI by electronic postal order

[dheerajjain]

Source: Hindustan Times, 06-March-11
URL: http://www.hindustantimes.com/Indians-A ... 21269.aspx

Indians abroad can now file online RTI plea
Chetan Chauhan, Hindustan Times
New Delhi, March 05, 2012
The first step to seek online information from the government under the Right To Information Act has been taken.

Banking regulator, the Reserve Bank of India, has allowed sale of electronic postal orders to Indian citizens living abroad through their credit and debit cards. "The facility will be used only for payment of fees under the RTI Act," says an order issued by RBI.

The facility available only for Indians living abroad would soon be extended to domestic citizens. "It is only matter of time before the government extends the facility to citizens living in India," said a senior government department.

The RTI activists have been demanding online filing of application to reduce cost of seeking information from the government. A study by National Campaign for People's Right To Information had found that a person spends about Rs 220 for filing an RTI application with a government department.

"By providing online facility this cost will reduce dramatically," said Commodore (retired) Lokesh Batra, who had filed several RTI applications on the problems faced by Indians living abroad in using the transparency law since 2008.

Till now, the Indians living abroad were allowed to file RTI applications with the Indian embassies and high commissions only. Many embassies and high commissioners had expressed their inability to accept a large number of RTI applications citing resource crunch.

Payment of the RTI fees of Rs 10 per application was the biggest hurdle in filing RTI applications as postal orders are not available outside India and fees in foreign currency was not accepted by many Indian missions.

With the new facility, the hurdle has been removed and the non-resident Indians will be able to submit RTI applications through an email with the respective Central Public Information Officers (CPIOs).

To make the system work, the CPIOs will be required to reply through email. Public information officers of RBI, Prime Minister's Office and the Planning Commission provide replied through email. "Others (CPIOs) will to follow suit," a government official said.

The department of posts has an international money transfer facility and would soon be providing electronic postal orders to facilitate online filing of applications from abroad. The way to make the facility seamless has been discussed by postal department minister Kapil Sibal and minister for personnel V Narayanasamy, mandated to implement the RTI Act.

[vkbans]

There is a website www.rtination.com to file RTI online...I shared this a long back also...I am not marketing agent of this company (it is opened by couple of guys from IIT).
They charge a nominal fees of 150 including every thing...

I have used it for tracking my PF and got reply with in 2months followed by PF amount transferred..second application related to GF/KLJ is already submitted around 25 days ago.waiting for response...

my expe with them so far so good...

[dheerajjain]

I believe RTI nation files RTI by proxy. It is a great way of asking information and getting replies. Govt. has now started direct RTI filing online for NRIs by way of electronic postal order only to be used for RTIs.