SC asks litigant to approach Jharkhand HC for setting up online RTI portal

New Delhi, Sep 9 (IANS) The Supreme Court on Monday refused to initiate contempt proceedings against the Registrar General of the Jharkhand High Court for not setting up an online RTI portal.

In a judgment passed in March last year, the apex court had ordered all the high courts in the country to operationalise, within three months, web portals for processing applications under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.

Disposing of the contempt petition, a bench, headed by CJI D.Y. Chandrachud, asked the petitioner, advocate Sushil Kumar Pandey, to approach the Jharkhand High Court with a writ petition seeking implementation of the SC judgment.

The contempt plea, filed through advocate Ashutosh Kumar Mishra, said that all the high courts across the country should have carried out the operationalisation of their online web portal for RTI, but to their utter dismay, no such online RTI portal has been operationalised by the Jharkhand High Court so far. It added the Registrar General of the Jharkhand HC has been flouting the SC order as the online portal has neither been started nor rules for the online portal have been framed or published in the public domain.

The plea said that the Registrar General of the Jharkhand HC was duty bound to ensure the compliance of the apex court order and a "severe irreparable damage and loss" was caused to the petitioner since he could not get a copy of his answer sheets of the mains examination for the post of District Judge (Direct from Bar).

In its judgment, the Supreme Court had said that online facilities will considerably facilitate the fulfilment of the objects of the RTI Act, 2005, adding that high courts will be at liberty to utilise the resources of the National Informatics Centre (NIC) for the purpose, which will provide all logistical and technical assistance.

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