HC closes contempt plea after govt’s compliance report

Srinagar, Nov 21: The High Court of J&K and Ladakh closed a contempt plea seeking implementation of the court's direction regarding setting up of an online RTI portal in Jammu and Kashmir.

A division bench of Chief Justice Tashi Rabstan and Justice M A Chowdhary disposed of the plea after the government filed its compliance report to the court regarding setting up of an online RTI portal.

In its compliance report the government revealed that the directions issued by the Court vide order dated 17.03.2022 had been duly complied with. “In view of the compliance report, nothing survives to adjudicate in the present contempt petition. Consequently, the contempt petition is closed and proceedings initiated against the respondents ( authorities) are accordingly dropped,” the court said, closing the PIL.

In March 2022, the Court had asked the government to take a call on a representation filed by two lawyers, Muhammad Tuyyab Malik and Muhammad Khurram Qureshi, regarding the setting up of an online RTI portal.

The Court had issued the order while disposing of the petition with a direction to the Chief Secretary to take a call upon the representation of the petitioners and pass a speaking order on it within a period of three months.

In the PIL, the two lawyers had sought the court's intervention to establish an online RTI request portal so that the citizens might be able to file online applications for the purposes of collecting information from any department of the Government.

The petitioners who appeared in person submitted before the court that residents of J&K were facing extreme difficulties in filing and following up on the applications and appeals filed under the Right to Information Act, 2005.

They said that the online RTI portal would enable the residents to file RTI applications without going through the physical process of posting the applications physically or having to visit the offices to get the desired information. “This will facilitate the speedy dispensation of the information sought by the applicants”, they had said.

They had said that the Central Government has already requested all the State and Union Territory Governments to enable the citizens to file online applications for collecting information from the various departments.