CHENNAI: Expressing happiness over the rise in awareness about Right to Information Act, State Chief Information Officer K.S Sripathi said here on Saturday that Tamil Nadu tops the list for number of applications this year with 48000 papers submitted between January 1 and October 31 alone. Addressing a workshop on RTI at Netrodaya, a home for visually-challenged, Sripathi said that awareness among the Public Information Officers has improved and number of appeals to CIO is coming down. There was also a drop in the number of recommendations for disciplinary action as officers have realised the consequences of not fulfilling their responsibilities, Sripathi said To further improve the services, applications were being numbered serially and entered into the computer. Once the necessary infrastructure was in place, discussions for which was underway with the NIC and BSNL, the applicants could ascertain the status of the application through the number sent to them on a cell phone. Sripathi said that while people were filing applications seeking a gamut of information, there was not enough awareness about the fact that RTI makes it eligible for appellants to ask for specific samples from the concerned departments. For example, a person could access physical samples taken by the highway department for construction of a bridge or a flyover and the authorities cannot deny such a request. Responding to a query from the audience that if Tamil Nadu could follow Bihar and provide replies to the visually-challenged in braille format, he said it could be considered. Regional Director of National Institute of Visually Handicapped, I. Arivanandham, during the workshop, offered that the institute was willing to help the State by printing the replies in braille format
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