HimVani
Shimla (Dec 22): Pradeep Kumar, a young BDO from Bilaspur in Himachal Pradesh, has won the National RTI Awards-2010 in best public information 0fficer PIO category. The best RTI journalist award has been won by Saikat Dutta of Outlook, best RTI citizen award by Vinita Kamte of Maharashtra, Manoj Kumar Karwarsa (Haryana), Ramesh Kumar Verma (Haryana), Athar Shamsi (UP) and Rajan Savlo Ghate of Goa. The jury members including Narayana Murthy, Justice JS Verma, Madhu Trehan, JM Lyngdoh and Sanjay Gupta.
A release issued by the National RTI Awards Secretariat stated that Kumar’s statistics speaks volumes for himself. Out of the 65 applications that he disposed, he did not deny information to a single applicant. He gave satisfactory information in almost all the cases within the stipulated time period of 30 days. “When we called up the appellants for their feedback on Kumar’s work, nearly 95.8% people reported satisfaction with the information that they received. Only one of his cases went into second appeal. This case was apparently received by the previous PIO and was handed over to him when he took over charge as the BDO of Bilaspur. In this case also, Kumar gave all the information to the applicant on the day of the hearing in the State Information Commission,” it has been stated in the release.
Kumar says, “I do not wait till a person files an RTI application to get information in my office. I give information to even those people who come up to me and ask for the records even without an application. I believe in complete transparency and pro-active disclosure.” The Awards ceremony is slated to be held in January 2011, where all the winners would be felicitated.
