Vijayawada: They receive, they go through and they don’t respond — this is the fate of RTI applications at the AP Secretariat. The General Administration Department (GAD) is least bothered to even acknowledge RTI applications. The Protocol Directorate also competes with the GAD section in taking matters easy, and does not show any interest in addressing the issues.
RTI commissioners have chided officials time and again on the same. When an RTI applicant sent an application to the Public Information Officer, Chief Minister’s Office (CMO), on June 20, requesting for information on 10 points, he received a reply after three weeks, advising him to resend the applications to GAD, AP Aviation Corp-oration Limited (APACL) and Protocol department separately, as the application had issues related to those three departments.
The applicant did so, on July 8. Till today, neither GAD nor protocol department has responded, while APACL did so last month, asking the applicant to pay '1,000 towards providing information. The same was paid in the form of a cheque and till now APACL has not provided the information. When the lack of respo-nse from PIOs of GAD and protocol departments was brought to the notice of the appellate authorities of both the departments, they also did not respond. The applicant informed the same to the Informat-ion Commissioner’s office, marking a copy to both the departments. There still was no response. Thus, af-ter three months of filing applications to the CMO, GAD of Secretariat and APACL, no positive respo-nse was forthcoming.
The applicant had sought copies of documents containing information related to the expenditure on helicopter staff as well as helicopter maintenance and fuel charges (chopper exclusively meant for the Chief Minister’s official trips) for the last five yea-rs, and also copies of documents containing information related to expenditure at the Protocol department, for the same period.
The applicant sought copies of the sanctioned budget to the protocol de-partment, with special reference to individual expe-nditure of the complete cr-ew of the protocol department for the last five yea-rs, and copies of the budget and maintenance of the helicopter and aircraft or flight meant for the CM’s official trips within the country and abroad (including special flights) for the last five years.
The applicant sought information from APACL on expenditure related to building helipads in the new capital Amaravati apart from seeking copies of documents related to the action taken reports (if any) against erring staff members in the protocol department for the last five years.
