Haryana Government on Sunday issued guidelines to all the Administrative Secretaries in the State regarding implementation of suo motu disclosure under Section 4 of Right to Information Act, 2005.
An official spokesman said that the purpose of suo motu disclosure under Section 4 is to place a large amount of information in public domain on a proactive basis to make the functioning of the public authorities more transparent and reduce the need for filing individual RTI applications.
He said that the Government has decided to issue the guidelines on the basis of the report of a task force constituted by the Central Government on suo motu disclosures under RTI Act.
Sub-section 4(2) of the RTI Act, 2005 requires every public authority to take steps to provide as much information suo motu to the public at regular intervals through various means of communication, including internet so that the public have minimum resort to use the Act to obtain information.
Information relating to procurement made by public authorities including publication of notice or tender enquiries, corrigenda thereon, and details of bid awards detailing the name of the supplier of goods or services being procured or the works contracts entered or any such combination of these and the rate and total amount at which such procurement or works contract is to be done should be disclosed.
All discretionary or non-discretionary grants or allocations to state governments, NGOs, other institutions by Ministry or Department should be placed on the website of the Ministry or Department concerned. Annual Accounts of all legal entities who are provided grants by Public Authorities should be made available through publication, directly or indirectly on the Public Authority’s website
Each Ministry or Public Authority shall ensure that these guidelines are fully operationalized within a period of six months from the date of their issue.
Proactive disclosure as per these guidelines would require collating a large quantum of information and digitizing it. Also, each Ministry or Public Authority should appoint a senior officer not below the rank of a Joint Secretary and not below the rank of Additional Head of Department in case of attached offices for ensuring compliance with the proactive disclosure guidelines, added the spokesperson.