The Prime Minister’s Office must have deliberately ignored the will that the parliament had expressed in the RTI Act, and the spirit of the Rules and Office Memoranda (OM) issued by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) when it comes to responding to RTI requests.
The DoPT is the nodal agency to implement people’s access to the government’s records in the entire nation. The PMO is one of the Ministries in Central Cabinet, under which the DoPT functions. The PMO’s Chief Public Information Officer cannot say that it has no knowledge of the Rules and OMs issued by its own wing – DoPT.
As has been reported by now, the PMO, perhaps, did not repose confidence in its own PM National Relief Fund, for reasons not explained, and created another fund called ‘PM-CARES’ in the wake of the coronavirus attack.
PM-CARES did not care for RTI, as PMO refused to give information about the thousands of crores of rupees of public money given into the accounts of government-controlled PM CARES fund.
In response to Vikrant Togad’s RTI application dated April 21, 2020, the PMO wrote back within six days refusing to furnish documents and information sought.
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