Notice to Guj Assembly secretariat on PIL about disclosure of information

The court should direct it to comply with section 4 of the RTI Act and disclose information about proceedings of the House and other detail on the Assemblys website, the PIL said.Section 4 provides that all public authorities should make available information about their organization and functioning suo motu on its own.

The Gujarat High Court has issued a notice to the secretariat of the Legislative Assembly in response to a Public Interest Litigation which seeks that information about the Assembly's functioning is provided online. A division bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and I J Vora issued the notice on Monday on a PIL filed by Neeta Hardikar which claimed that the secretariat does not provide information ''pro-actively'' under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.

The court sought a response by February 17. The court should direct it to comply with section 4 of the RTI Act and disclose information about proceedings of the House and other detail on the Assembly's website, the PIL said.

Section 4 provides that all public authorities should make available information about their organization and functioning ''suo moto'' (on its own). Besides the proceedings, the secretariat should provide live telecasts as well as recordings of old telecasts and transcripts, private member's business, zero-hour, list of questions and their answers, and text of debates, the PIL said.

It also demanded to upload the text of legislation which has been introduced, passed, pending, withdrawn, or rejected by the Assembly, information about house committees, and rules, among other things. Legislatures of Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, Goa, Kerala, Bihar, Delhi, and Rajasthan update information about house proceedings online, it said.

While the PIL is pending, the court should direct the authorities to upload all the available information and the telecast of proceedings of the coming session of the Assembly, it demanded.