BPO for RTI awaiting cabinet nod

The Karnataka government has been dragging its feet on the proposal for setting up a BPO for filing RTI applications and giving information on RTI guidelines. The project, expected to be operational in June 2011, is yet to get the cabinet approval.

CMC Limited, a Tata group company, had won the bid for setting up a BPO for the process and a letter of intent was also given. According to state government officials, the project is a Rs 7 crore project. Companies like CMC Ltd, Mindtree, Aditya Birla Minacs Worldwide Ltd and Wipro had participated in the bidding.

M N Vidyashankar, Principal Secretary — IT, BT, S&T and e-governance, said, “The project will help the common man file an RTI in an easier way. We were planning to launch it earlier. However, the cabinet approval is pending. The project is also undergoing a pilot for technical glitches in the system so that we can make a fool proof system.”Karnataka presently sees around 60,000 to 65,000 RTI filings every year. The new BPO centre will help a person file an RTI both in Kannada and English.

Under the initiative, anybody can file an RTI relating to all government departments and corporations in the state over phone. The calls to the centre will be a premium call from any mobiles and will be charged at Rs 10 as the fee for filing RTI.

According to a senior official in CMC-Bangalore, the project is completely funded by the state government. As part of the plan, the government will give the complete fund for setting up the facility and also an annual maintenance fee.“We were announced as winners for the contract in March this year. But, the project is not operational as it is stuck with the cabinet,” said an official from CMC Ltd.

The company will deploy a team of 15 members at their Bangalore facility for the intial roll-out and based on the response it may increase the team strength to around 100 people.