Indians abroad keen to avail the information tool, but operational deficiencies remain

Indians abroad keen to avail the information tool, but operational deficiencies remain

Tarun Prakash Singh, a software engineer in New Jersey has been running from pillar to post for the past two years, to arrange a passport for his mother who lives in Ghaziabad. Tired with all his travails, Singh tried to file an RTI plea with the regional passport office. But he was shocked on receiving information that to avail the Right to Information, he had to be on Indian shores.

"My mother who had applied for her passport two years back from Ghaziabad is still waiting to come to New Jersey and meet me as her passport application is still being processed. So after seeing this situation I tried to file an RTI to know how many applications do they get, how many passports they produce and what is the average time, but I could not get the information as there was no such provision," said Tarun.

Tarun is not alone. There are many Indians abroad who are keen to avail the Right to Information. So, some of them have initiated a signature campaign addressing a letter to the prime minister. An application is likely to be presented to the Indian embassy in Washington. The animation is palpable. More than 100 NRIs signed the campaign in less than 48 hours.

The movement was initiated by RTI activist Commodore (Retd) Lokesh K Batra who himself could not file a plea while vacationing at his daughter's place in the United States. Batra wanted to unearth various facts from government departments regarding the Nithari killings in Noida. Due to unavailability of the service he could not file the RTI. So he made his way back to India and filed the RTIs, which helped in bringing the apathy of several government agencies to light.u00a0

"I was unable to exercise my right in the absence of procedure/rules for payment of RTI fees in foreign currency from abroad. However I was able to participate in the hearing of my RTI appeal conducted by the Hon'ble Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) from his office in New Delhi, through an audio conference. After having faced this difficulty, I realised the gravity of this problem for Indian citizens while they are away from India," said Batra who is a resident of Noida.

NRIs are suggesting an arrangement from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), for missions to accept RTI fees in foreign currency from applicants and for central public authorities to use the same procedure as they do for RTI applications concerning their own ministry.

In this case, a mission's role would be to accept the fee along with a copy of passport to verify citizenship (as they do now) and to issue a receipt/E-receipt to the applicant for the fee.

Case in point
In 2005, Tushar Dalvi used RTI and managed to get his refund, which was pending for five years, in a week's time. Dalvi, an NRI, settled in Santa Cruz, has a non-resident ordinary account (NRO) from which the bank was deducting tax at source (TDS) on the interest accumulated on his deposits. Although he had filed returns and applied for a refund with the central international taxation department from 2002 onwards, he had not got a single reply from the IT department. Dalvi decided to file an RTI query with the IT dept's central public information officer about the status on his pending refund. And within a few days he got the interest and the assessment orders from the department which they had missed initially, and the original refund cheques.