The Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court ordered the Chief Secretary of the Union Territory Of Jammu & Kashmir to take a decision on the formation of RTI portal in the Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir in less than 90 days.
The Bench consisting of Chief Justice Pankaj Mithal and Justice Sindhu Sharma issued an order related to PIL plea registered by Mohammad Tuyyab Malik and Mohammad Khurram Qureshi pursuing the Courts direction to the Government for the formation of an online Portal for the RTI.
The Petitioners had contended that the formation of RTI Portal is important, because of which the people can file online applications with the motive of collecting information from any Government Department.
It was put forward that the Central Government has asked all the States as well as union territory governments to allow the people to file any online application for acquiring information from any Government departments.
The Petitioners said that the Government had already unfolded the codes which are compulsory to execute the system by the States and is qualified to give away technical support for it.
The petitioners featured before the Court that in one of the important provisions which is Section 7(1) of the RTI Act which says that information sought for concerns the life or liberty of a person, the same shall be provided within 48 hours of the receipt of the request" is not efficacious under the present system and it has severe consequences on the life and liberty of citizens.
The Petitioners also enlightened the Court that they made many representations for this but it was fruitless and the Online RTI portal was not accessible to the public.
After viewing the above facts and circumstances, the Court felt that it was apt to dispose the petition with direction of Chief secretary to ask on the representation of the petitioners and to permit the speaking order on the same, most likely under a period of 3 months.
Before discarding the plea, the Court allowed the petitioners to make a new exhaustive representation in accordance with the representation which has been already made in order to ask the Chief Secretary to issue the facility of the Online RTI portal
The Case title is Mohammad Tuyyab Malik and Other V. Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
RTI Online Jul 09, 2022
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