Assembly Speaker holds meeting
Jharkhand Assembly Speaker Shashank Shekhar Bhokta today held a meeting with officials of Forest & Environment, Water Resources and Revenue & land Reforms to asses the problems faced in starting the pending irrigation projects in the State. At the meeting, Bhokta gave his assent to dedicating around 5000 acres of land in Gumla to the Forest department. Notably, Bhokta gave his assent to few more transfer of this type.
Taurian world school honoured
Taurian World School has been honoured by the Central Board of Secondary Education, Delhi to host the East Zone lawn Tennis and Cluster II Table Tennis Tournaments from October 22 – 27, 2013. The School was conferred this honor by CBSE after rigorous inspection of international standards of sporting facilities. CBSE officials have highly appreciated the sports provision inside the school campus.
Chanakya IAS Academy starts new batch
Chanakya IAS Academy started a new batch of UPSC Prelims 2014 on October 21 at its lalpur centre near Arya hotel in Ranchi. The Vice president of Chanakya, Vinay Kumar Mishra said that the centre is known for its quality performance and has several branches in more than 10 cities.
uotIJ,i hIJIJ xIJIJ ormation Commissioner Justice (Retd)
DK Sinha in an exclusive talks with The Pioneer on Monday.
It is not that the Commission is just languishing in terms of insufficient fund only, but also the lack of infrastructure such as support staff and even Information Commissioners has hit the functioning of the Commission. "I have plans to hold hearings at regional centres and distant areas so that people feel easy. But we have just one Information Commissioner against the sanctioned strength of six. Pendency of cases had also gone up in the light of the Supreme Court judgment which is now coming down slowly," added the CIC.
After much hue and cry the Government appointed PR Dash as Information Commissioner as the hearing was not possible with a single bench as per the Apex Court verdict. Since coming into existence, latest figures suggest that the Commission has 3,871 appeals pending against the total 14,609 received. The Commission, though feels that attitude of the Government officials towards information seekers has taken a positive turn but there is still lot of scope for improvement.
"Attitude of the officials is changing but breaking the age old mentality would take time. There are officials who unnecessarily delay the information and delay things. They do not show seriousness and run for excuses even when the Act has become a reality," said Information Commissioner PR Dash. He even added that the attitude has
potential to erode the credibility of the Act.
However, the Commission has set standards by slapping fines and penalties against erring PIOs that amounted about Rs 3 lakh in the year 2012. At the same time the Commission has also denounced efforts to misuse the provisions. "I have seen appeals seeking information just for exploiting the provisions for BPl and sometimes even to extort money," added Justice
(Retd) Sinha.
sIJP JIJ IJ/IJ mination wherein more than 50 per cent candidates were from outside the state. She said, "You can take the example of any state except Jharkhand. It is clearly mentioned that five percent seats are reserved for candidates outside the state. Moreover, Bhojpuri is a language of Bihar. Neither is it the second language of Jharkhand. Such Bhojpuri passed candidates much seek their preference in Bihar."
A senior officer of JAC, on the issue, said, 'We are a subordinate body established under the state government and are bound to follow HRD Minister's instruction since she is the exact authority to take decision. No official notification has been given to us on this specific statement. Till now whatever is known is spread through the local newspapers."