Law students to assess govt departments suo motu disclosures

Law students will be roped in by the Centre to study suo motu disclosure of governance-related information by its various ministries under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
The Department of Personnel and Training, nodal authority for implementation of the RTI Act, has decided to give internship to students pursuing law courses to assess voluntary disclosures by various central government ministries.
The DoPT has been conducting internship programme for the ministries and departments in the government of India. This will help them consolidate and document its experience in the implementation of RTI, its successes, constraints in implementation, identify the areas which need more attention, address the gap areas and suggest what more needs to be done to help achieve the objectives of the Act.

"The interns would be familiarised with the process of seeking information and enabling access to information under the RTI regime," said the guidelines issued by the DoPT for the internship.
The applicants would analyse the applications to get an overall picture and do an in-depth study of the information sought and the response by the public authority, it said.
As per the RTI Act, public authorities which mean central government departments are mandated to put in public domain governance related information being dealt by them in public domain.

The interns would study quantity and quality of information displayed under suo motu disclosure and whether any audit of the suo motu disclosure has been made within the department or by any independent agency and details thereof.

The proposed internships would be for duration of one month starting December 1, 2015 onwards.
The RTI Act empowers a citizen to get a time-bound reply on information related to the governance.