Law students to assess govt departments’ transparency

New Delhi, Sep 1 (PTI) Law students will be engaged bythe Centre to suggest ways for improving transparency andaccountability in the governance through effectiveimplementation of the Right to Information (RTI) Act. The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), nodalauthority for implementation of the RTI Act, has decided togive internship to students pursuing law courses to assessvoluntary disclosures by various central governmentministries. "The primary goal of the scheme is to contribute towardsmore accountable and transparent government and it has severalcomponents including programmes for awareness generation,training and e-governance initiatives for RTI for achievingthe purpose," the DoPT said in an order issued today. The programme will help the ministry or departmentconsolidate and document its experience in the implementationof RTI, its successes, constraints in implementation, identifythe areas which need more attention, address the gap areas andsuggest what more needs to be done to help achieve theobjectives of the Act. "The interns would be familiarised with the process ofseeking information and enabling access to information underthe RTI regime," it said. The RTI Act, 2005, which was enacted by the UPAgovernment, empowers a citizen to seek a time-bound reply oninformation related to the governance. The applicants would analyse the applications to get anoverall picture and do an in-depth study of the informationsought and the response by the public authority. "The interns would also study the status of suo motudisclosure of the ministry or department allotted to them fortheir internship and would submit a report in this regard,"the DoPT said. As per the RTI Act, public authorities which mean centralgovernment departments are mandated to put in public domaingovernance related information being dealt by them in publicdomain. Based on the analysis of RTI applications made by them,the interns have to make specific recommendations regardingvarious kinds of information or documents of the departmentconcerned that can be included in the suo motu disclosures,besides major governance policy initiatives that can be takento improve governance, it said. The proposed internships would be for duration of onemonth starting December 15, 2016 onwards. Interns will beentitled to a consolidated remuneration of Rs 10,000 payableon submission and acceptance of their internship reports bythe competent authority in the DoPT. PTI AKV AAR RGAAR