It refers to Central Information Commission appropriately dismissing 141 irrelevant petitions of a single individual against office of Delhi Lt Governor through its five detailed orders relying on warning to same person against such practice of misuse of RTI Act in an earlier CIC-order against office of Delhi Chief Minister.
Misuse of RTI Act not only results in huge wastage of public-resources, but also results in unnecessary delay in disposal of petitions by Information Commissions of genuine information-seekers, for which simple changes in RTI rules without amending RTI Act are of utmost importance. RTI fees of rupees ten fixed 15 years back has become irrelevant and should be uniform at rupees 50 but inclusive of cost of first 20 copied pages thereby not harming monetarily RTI applicants. But postal-charges and man-hours spent in demanding and remitting copying charges will be saved both for petitioner and the public authority. ID proof should be compulsory with each RTI application so as to prevent filing RTI applications in name of others.
RTI stamps in denominations of rupees 2, 10 and 50 should be issued on lines of erstwhile stamps used for licences of radio and TV sets in accordance with numerous CIC-verdicts (including one by a full bench) and administrative CIC-recommendations, to save hugely on handling of postal-orders used as mode of payment of RTI fees. Facility of accepting post-free RTI applications should be extended to all about 160000 post-offices in the country rather than about 4500 post-offices presently. If basic RTI fees is raised to rupees 50, then even a special RTI stamp costing rupees 50 towards RTI fees can be introduced to send RTI applications.
SUBHASH CHANDRA AGRAWAL