State to add RTI under Citizen Charter

Enthused by the success of ‘Sakala’ the citizen’s charter services, Karnataka on Friday said it has decided to add RTI queries, taking the total services offered under the programme to 152 from 11 departments.

The Right to Information service will commence from this month end, Minister for Law and Parliamentary Affairs S Suresh Kumar, who has been monitoring the implementation of the Citizen Charter programme, told a press conference after reivewing it with top officials.

The government extended the Sakala programme to the whole state from April 2. During April, 1 million applications for various services were received and 850,000 applications were disposed of, achieving 98.59 per cent success, Kumar said.

 

Chitradurga district took the first place in disposal of applications, followed by Uttara Kannada and Davanagere. Gulbarga was rated lowest district, ranked 30th in disposal of applications under Sakala, Chikmagalur 29th and Bangalore Rural 28th, Kumar said. The Call Centre set up by the government to redress queries by people recorded 23,000 calls and out of them only four related to Sakala programme.

About 41 per cent of the callers were for general enquiry, 31 per cent on procedures stipulated for sakala programme and 21 per cent wanted information on the Citizen Charter Act, Kumar said. The government is holding an interactive session with “India Against Corruption”, an organisation fighting against corruption on May six to elicit opinion on the programme, Residents Associations in Bangalore on May eight and a workshop during middle of June, he said.