Less than 24 hours after Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel inaugurated the RTI portal as a mandate by the Gujarat High Court, it was down and not functioning.
Vibes of India checked the portal at least four times during the day and found that the site was down. (screenshots below). The Right to Information Act was passed in 2005. The Gujarat government launched the portal in 2021 and that too is dysfunctional.
The contact section of the portal is disabled. For any queries or guidance there is none to help. Citizens are left at their own disposal. Even if you go to the FAQ section, it is only available in English. For the portal that will be majorly used by the Gujarati audience, the question and answer section is not in Gujarati language.
Patel’s decision was in accordance with two Public Interest Litigations (PILs), of 2018 and 2019 respectively, before the Gujarat High Court, seeking implementation of online filing of RTI applications.
Earlier, while hearing two public interest litigations that have sought facilities for online filing and fee payment for RTI applications in the state, the Gujarat High Court sought a response from the state “whether you are ready to process RTI applications online or not,”. Taken up by the court of Chief Justice Aravind and Justice Hemant Prachchhak,. The state was expected to respond to the court’s queries by November 17 when the next hearing is scheduled.
In response, Gujarat chief Minister Bhupendra Patel on Tuesday launched an online Right to Information (RTI) portal enabling online filing of RTI applications by citizens.
Patel’s decision is in accordance with two Public Interest Litigations (PILs), of 2018 and 2019 respectively, before the Gujarat High Court, seeking implementation of online filing of RTI applications.
Now citizens will be able to file RTI applications online at onlinerti.gujarat.gov.in to seek information from any of the secretariat departments. As per a press release by the state government, the services will be subsequently made available for head offices and district-level offices in a phased manner soon.
RTI activist Pankti Jog found a number of limitations in the portal. She said, “Everytime you want to file an RTI, you have to fill up your information and login. This feature is exclusive to Gujarat Portal, the central or even Rajasthan portal doesn’t have this hassle. For rural people or the ones who are not so familiar with technology this is a problematic feature. This needs to be removed.”
“When you access Gujarati language in the portal, it is evident that they have used Google translate or similar tool to translate the content from english to Gujarati. There are grammatical errors and much is lost in translation. This portal will be majorly used by Gujaratis, then why this shoddy job?”
“Gujarat doesn’t have a chief information commissioner. The last one retired on 27 August, 2021 but the government had no advance planning of appointing a new commissioner at least when they were launching the portal,” adds Jog.
Another RTI activist Pankaj Bhatt talks about a 40% increase in fees when one has to file an RTI. “On online portals the standard fee is Rs 10 but when you pay through the Gujarat RTI portal it increases to Rs 24. This is a massive price increase if we want to file more than one RTIs.”
“When accessing the portal it seems like the GAD department came with the portal as they were under pressure from the High Court. The portal is not at all ready for public usage. This may be the beta version.” adds Bhatt. While activists allege that the government is not interested in maintaining transparency, government officials, while denying the charge, admit that the system is riddled with technical glitches.
