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The Right to Information Act 2005 (RTI) is an Act of the Parliament of India "to provide for setting out the practical regime of right to information for citizens." The Act applies to all States and Union Territories of India except the State of Jammu and Kashmir. Jammu and Kashmir has its own act called Jammu & Kashmir Right to Information Act, 2009. Under the provisions of the Act, any citizen may request information from a "public authority" (a body of Government or "instrumentality of State") which is required to reply expeditiously or within thirty days. The Act also requires every public authority to computerize their records for wide dissemination and to pro-actively publish certain categories of information so that the citizens need minimum recourse to request for information formally. This law was passed by Parliament on 15 June 2005 and came fully into force on 12 October 2005.[1] Information disclosure in India was hitherto restricted by the Official Secrets Act 1923 and various other special laws, which the new RTI Act now relaxes. A citizen desiring to seek certain information can file an application containing a list of the required information (generally where more than one question is sought it is suggested the same be done point-wise) on a sheet of plain paper or one can download a prescribed form online. Where the application is made on a sheet of plain paper the citizen should clearly mention in its subject head that it is a “RTI Application”. The application may be written or through electronic means and can be in English, Hindi or the official language of the area in which the application is made. Further, as per the provisions of the RTI Act, the RTI Application should be accompanied with an application fee of prescribed amount by way of cash against proper receipt or Indian Postal Order (IPO) or demand draft (DD) or banker’s cheque payable to the “Accounts Officer” of the concerned public department. This prescribed amount is notified by rules made by the appropriate government (Centre, State). For example, the Central Government has made a rule of INR 10/- as the application fee. It may be noted that an inappropriately drawn IPO, DD or banker’s cheque can cause rejection of the RTI Application by the public authority. As per the provisions of the RTI Act, there are officials designated as central public information officers (CPIO) and State public information officers (SPIO) within the public authorities to whom the RTI Applications should be addressed. The information on who is the concerned Central Public Information Officer or State Public Information Officer within each authority is available on their websites. Where a citizen is not sure about whom to address his/her application as there is no access to the accurate details of the CPIO/SPIO, one can just address it to the “Central or State Public Information Officer” as the case may be followed by the complete address of the public authority. One of the suggested requisites of the whole process is to procure the correct and complete address of the concerned authority otherwise there can be chances where incomplete or improper addresses may cause the loss of the RTI Application in the process of dispatch.
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