State to pioneer tele-filing of RTI petitions

Karnataka, better known for its leading Indian and global IT companies, is all set to open a business process outsourcing (BPO) centre - the first of its kind in the country — exclusively for filing petitions under the Right to Information Act. Citizens need to call up the centre, expected to be located in Bangalore, to file RTI applications, in lieu of some charges.

“We will open a call centre in Bangalore for the process and a person can call up the centre and file an RTI against any department in the state. Unlike other BPO calls this will be a premium call and the user will be charged. The charge will be considered as the fee for filing RTI,” M N Vidyashankar, Principal Secretary, e-Governance Department, Govt of Karnataka told Business Standard.

Called as ‘Mahiti’ (means information in Kannada), the project will be launched in June. Along with the BPO, the government will also club it with grievance redressal supervision and monitoring system to track the RTI complaints. According to Vidyashankar, once operational, the BPO will work for 12 hours a day. “After studying the response, we might extend the timing to make it available round-the-clock. With this, more people can seek information through the RTI route,” he said. The medium for filing the petition will be in Kannada and English.

Karnataka receives RTI filings of around 60,000 to 65,000 every year.

According to highly placed sources, leading Indian and global IT firms who also offers BPO services, have expressed interest in the project. The final bidder is expected to announce later this week.

Apart from this, the state government is planning to make all the financial transactions of the finance department, paperless. The finance department has even initiated the project and has received requests for proposals (RFPs) to this effect. It is understood that nine companies including India’s top IT services firms like TCS, Infosys, Wipro have expressed their interest to participate in the project. When asked of the enrollment status of unique identification project (now called Aadhaar), Vidyashankar said more than 1.5 million people have been added in the first phase of enrollment process, in the districts like Tumkur and Mysore.

The government is planning to appoint four agencies for the four revenue divisions — Bangalore, Gulbarga, Belgaum, Mysore — of the state for the process. “We expect to launch the enrollment drive in Bangalore from April 1. There will be one permanent enrollment centre in all districts. In Bangalore, people can also go and register their details in BangaloreOne centres,” Vidyashankar added.

Meanwhile, the e-governance department is planning to commission its second data centre. The data centre is being developed with an investment of Rs 53 crore. It will be maintained by TCS for five years.