Gagan K.

I have been hearing, reading about RTI from past 2-3 years and advising some friends about using it. Yet, I myself had not used RTI even once. At least to boast in front of my friends that I used RTI once. I only knew about the theory of RTI and nothing about practically applying it.

Now, i and my friend Ravi Shekhara decided to file an RTI with respect to the reduction of examination duration by the University of Mysore. We scratched our heads for a couple of days about what questions to ask and how those questions will be helpful to us. We discussed together on google talk and collaboratively drafted the application on google docs.

And today (11th March 2008), morning, we got two Indian Postal Orders of 5 rupees each. It was 1pm by the time we got the final print out. We reached the University Crawford hall (the main office of the University) by 1:15pm.

There were no boards inside the office building indicating information about the Public Information Officer. As per the Right to Information Act 2005, it is mandatory that all public authorities should put a board in their offices indicating the name(s) of Public Information officer(s).

We approached the enquiry desk to seek information about where the public information officer’s chamber was situated. We had earlier at home checked on Mysore University website as to who the PIO was. The PIO was BJ Hosmath (Indian Forest Service, and not foreign service as we had wrongly presumed earlier ). And the person at the help desk said that there was no such post called “public information officer”. We realised he dint know anything about RTI and we asked where the Chamber of the Registrar was situated. It was on the first floor of the hall.

We went near his chamber door which looked like an operation theatre in dodda-aaspathre with red and green lights on the door. We were afraid to enter his chamber. Instead we thought of entering his PA’s chamber. We went in and asked his PA about filing an RTI application.

She took the application and glanced at it for a second and was unclearly telling something and all. She said, we need to file the application only in the prescribed form which was available in the office’s general section.

We went to the general section to find the employees going out for lunch. Well it was almost the lunch time. They asked us to come after 2;30pm. So we exited the office premises and went for a hot sun walk through the Kautilya circle, ramya hotel, jlb road, marimallappa college, shantala talkies, chamaraja double road to ramaswamy circle to Maharaja college canteen. We ordered for a bisibele bath which was like bisi-bele-ganji almost watery. Couldn’t sustain the great ganji-bath and we decided save our lives by eating pach-baLe haNNu.

We sat in the shade of some trees of Maharaja college and went through the kannada book “maahiti hakku kaipiDi” and searched for the provision where it talked about the way of filing the application. In the Karnataka Right to Information Rules 2005, Sec 4 clearly said “the application can be filed in the prescribed form A or in any other form which contains the necessary information. So we had at least one supporting factor. Next we went through some cases where the commission had held that the information can be sought through a normal white paper which contains all the requisites.

Now it was 2:30, we went into the university office. We enquired at the general section about getting the prescribed form. But some employees said that there was no such form existed with them. And one employee when we said “RTI” asked us back “RTO?”

Now we went to the PA of the registrar to file our application in the same format. We showed her the specific provision of the rules which convinced her to accept the application as it is. But she was totally ignorant of the provisions of the Act. She said “this is pertaining to examination and should be presented at exam department.” Thankfully her colleague knew quite well about the provisions and advised her that she can accept the application and forward it to the respective department.

The “colleague person” (punyaatma) also advised us to bring two copies of RTI applications, so that we could submit one copy and get seal affixed on the other copy and keep it as ackowledgement. Luckily we had carried three copies of the same application and we submitted one and got another affixed with seal.

As she gave us the ackowledgement, we were full happy and thanked the madam and came out jumping and i felt like how i had felt when i voted for the first time! I was telling my friend “hey, here we finally filed our first RTI. Let us wait for the reply.”

We came out of the office thinking when we will get the response and how we can use the information that we would get and how to go to Bangalore if we had to appeal. Foresightedness at its worst!

Now we are happily typing this news here. We will be back once we get a reply. Our sincere thanks to all the warriors who fought for the implementation of RTI Act. And specially to One Organisation which brought out the book “maahiti hakku kaipiDi”. And all the people who have made publicised RTI.