TEAM HERALD
PANJIM: A legal notice has been sent to Chief Secretary B Vijayan over the non-functional and failure to regularly update government websites. The notice gave the Chief Secretary 15 days to ensure that all government departments do the needful and to also appoint a Public Information Officer in the office of the Advocate General as was directed by the State Information Commission in 2011.
Pointing out that Section 4 of the RTI Act mandates that all information should be uploaded and regularly updated on all government websites, Adv Aires Rodrigues in his notice alleged that the lackadaisical approach of the government in not complying with the mandate of the RTI Act defeats the very purpose of the Act and expressed concern that the websites are intentionally kept non-functional under the guise that they have been hacked only to deny the public their rightful access to information.
He also drew the attention of the CS that CM had told the Assembly that people would not be required to seek information under the RTI Act as all file notings would be uploaded on the government website.
