Judging by how the frivolous cases get filed again and again repeatedly by same or different petitioners, I would say the legit cases would be less than 10%. I don't have concrete figures on paper to prove it, but you don't have it either to prove otherwise.
Exactly. And you do need the numbers otherwise its speculation, number changes depending on whom you ask.
Are there any studies that have been conducted on this issue. Then you need to examine the methodology they use to determine whether a request is legit or not.
There are occasional articles in newspapers about how lot of such frivolous cases get filed. Like every damn thing in the country that exists for the benefit of the people gets utilized to a minor degree and abused majorly, RTI is no exception.
Sweeping generalisation.
When these newspaper report 'how much' who/what are they using to make that statement. WHat are their primary sources.
The first one was struck off in the court on grounds that it was personal info, but the petitioner was not penalized. AFAIK, there were lots of other people who petitioned for the same sort of info. i.e religion of Sonia Gandhi or some one else. In the second case, the IT Dept initially rejected the petition on grounds that that it was personal info. but the petitioner filed it again saying that IT dept cannot reject the case on its own as Sonia Gandhi herself can decide to reveal that info and so the new request was forwarded to her. She rejected it on the grounds that it is info of a personal nature. As I understand it, the petitioner has filed it again.
I recall the sonia gandhi thing was due to the attempts of Subramnaim swamy. Motivation & intent was political. Now if after three attempts were rejected on legal grounds, then filing further requests is with the intent to harass. So she is free to make that charge isn't it. But she does not do it because it would hand the other a PR victory. SS has made a career out of doing this, he must file constantly to show he is doing 'something'. Whether that 'something' will ever yield a result is immaterial.
The other most common misuse of RTI that I know of is to get PF account status. Earlier there were thousands of RTI petitions filed just to get the PF status. This is despite the fact that there are other ways to get this info currently.
There may be other ways to do it but do they produce a result within a stipulated time frame thats the whole point of RTI isn't it.
What is a PF account btw ? personal funds or other
It should be glaringly obvious that the system is unable to cope with the load. But still there is a difference between 100 legit requests out of 200 getting through and only 10 getting though because there are 1000 more frivolous requests. I don't think the legit cases have to go through the court except in rare cases. It's the frivolous ones where courts have to get involved most of the time.
Without proper numbers its not possible to make this statement.
In some very rare situations, yes but not in most other cases. But it should become the norm.
Why isn't that the case then. What are the obstacles.
I would bet in most of the cases the other person does not file a complaint.
Lord Nemesis' timestamp='1331810975' post='1719773 said:
True enough, We need everything to be defined precisely on paper. Our countrymen always seem to have the knack for exploiting and abusing every damn thing given to us to be utilized for our benefit. Our country men have no moral responsibility and not an ounce of common sense required to utilize their rights properly and when its really needed. If not for the fact that murder is theoritically a crime, our people would be running around murdering more people than they are doing now. People who don't understand the value of their rights and the proper way of utilizing them don't deserve any of it.
The inherent problem is in how you define what can and cannot be requested.
Many times an RTI request is a building block in a case whose goal might not be immediately obvious. There may be follow up requests based on the responses given. and once enough evidence has been collected then a case can be made.
To limit RTI on the basis of abuse whose extent is yet to be reliably shown, would be bad. It would be a step backward. For me the only people that would be for such is the establishement. It ain't the common man. A few bad apples does not mean everybody should pay the price.
To put it another way i would be for RTI remaining untouched and provisions allowed in cases where repeated requests have been conclusively proven to be of an ulterior motive. This in itself is shaky too. All to show that its a complex problem whose parameters have to be understood before any tweaks are introduced.
the equivalent of RTI is FOA (freedom of information) in the US and was introduced in the 70s. I wonder how they deal with such issues.
Neo-N' timestamp='1331813509' post='1719802 said:
#Lord Nemesis Well said. But anything you say, no matter how profoundly correct and justified is not gonna stop a troll from finding reasons to argue upon! Good Luck!
A quick glance at my posting history, that too over the years will disprove it.
But hey lets not let the evidence get in the way of that. Lets not make up our minds on a sound basis but be spoon fed biased crap.
In this thread you've displayed a predilection to make statements without evidence so this is no different.
All this from a law student
