SC to unveil RTI online portal next week: CJI
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court is expected to unveil its online Right To Information (RTI) portal next week, making it more convenient for people to access information about the top court, which is a public authority under the transparency law. At present, RTI applications with respect to the Supreme Court are to be filed through post.
Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud made the announcement on Monday when a case relating to the online RTI portal for high courts and lower judiciary was mentioned before him.
The CJI was emphatic that the Supreme Court should lead by example, and that it may not be proper to issue judicial directions to the high courts and district courts when the top court is itself wanting in the aspect concerned.
“We are most likely to launch the online RTI portal next week. We are completely ready. Some security audits were there. We will launch it next week,” declared jusit.” tice Chandrachud.
The CJI added: “So for the high courts to be concerned, we have to lead from the front and then we can push them on the administrative side. We can only ask them to do something after we have done The court then posted the petition for a hearing after three weeks, assuring the petitioners’ lawyer that the Supreme Court’s RTI portal would have gone live by then. Last week too, a bench led by CJI Chandrachud had taken up a similar petition, demanding an online RTI portal for the Supreme Court. In that case filed by two law students praying that an online RTI portal be set up for the apex court, advocate Prashant Bhushan appeared for the petitioners.
When this matter was taken up on Friday, the CJI had told
Bhushan: “The RTI portal is ready and it can go live at any time now… In fact, it will make our lives easier too. You can receive queries online and they can be answered conveniently. Otherwise, there are postal communications and they have to be physically placed before the competent authority.”
The bench wrapped up the petition, recording in its order: “The online portal of the Supreme Court for streamlining the responses under the Right to Information Act, 2005 is practically ready for being launched.”