I used RTI twice so far. In both cases, I would say that I had a good experience. The most important aspect is to frame the questions very precise and clear. The questions should ideally not be of the form to get an “Yes” or “No” answer. Rather, they should be to get some explanation/details. This allows to probe further, in case clarifications are needed to address a larger problem instead of a specific issue in concern. Before filing RTI, I would recommend regular routes of getting information through contacts, internet or preferably go to the concerned office. Only if you are not getting what you are looking for, go for RTI.

I filed a separate RTI application to Income Tax department June 2009 regarding the aided PU colleges. The response highlights:
•         The Trusts/Societies associated with MES, SSMRV, Vijaya, Kengeri, Sarvothama colleges (for which I asked for clarification by giving the corresponding Trust names) are not registered with IT department. However, if you see the college fee receipts, you would find that these colleges issue receipts as “voluntary contribution” instead of fee. In fact, they write the name of student’s father on it. PU Board is yet to clarify to me in this regard on various questions that I asked. I shall keep you posted once I have update. [Apparently it has got something to do with the (f)law. Looks like it is probably one of the points in the education reforms bill as well.]
•         Any NGO doesn’t need to print their PAN info on the receipt. Having 80-G number and validity on the receipt is good enough.

Ravi Vattipalli filed an RTI application June 2009 to provide the college information online on this site.
The RTI seems to have worked and the college information is available now online on the Karnataka Pre-University Board website.

A quick analysis of the data as of July provided the following summary for Bangalore.

Provide a repository to share the results of RTI queries that have been filed by the general public. The idea is to make sure the information obtained from the replies is available for others who are interested in the same or similar information and does not just lie with the filer of the RTI query. This is specially applicable to all the queries where the information has been provided by the concerned agency / department either by providing a CD or by a link to a web resource hosting the information.

Method

To start with , we will use a simple process. If you have filed an RTI and have obtained the information in electronic form, you can send us an email at submit@theawareindian.org with the details of the results.We will post the information containing the links to the results as a new post on this blog with the right keywords that will allow for easier search.

About RTI

There are a lot of organizations and websites that provide basic information about RTI and how to use this powerful tool. Provided below are links to some of them. If you know about more sites do send us the details at info@theawareindian.net, we will gladly add to this list.