Coimbatore: It has been more than a month since the Tamil Nadu local bodies ombudsman directed the Coimbatore corporation to upload the resolutions that the commissioner,
in his capacity as the special officer,
has passed till August 2018 in its website, But the corporation has not uploaded even a single document till date.
Following a petition filed by activist SP Thiyagarajan, the ombudsman on August 24 had directed the corporation to upload all the resolutions. As per the Right to Information Act, 2005, the civic body should upload all the resolutions in its website as they are public documents.
“Whenever a resolution is passed by the council, it should be uploaded in the corporation website. The directive was followed even after the council was dissolved in October 2016. The website has resolutions passed by the commissioner in the capacity of the special officer till July 2017. It was stopped abruptly,” Thiyagarajan said.
“In recent times, the corporation has been announcing several high-cost projects. But the public have no option to know about the details. The corporation had passed a total of 185 resolutions between July 2017 and March 2018, according to an RTI reply. While public money is being spend to implement projects, public are not given details about them,” he told TOI.
RTI activists decide to wait till the resolutions are uploaded in the website as they could not afford to pay and get the documents that runs through hundreds of pages through RTI, Thiyagarajan said. “There is no transparency in the functioning of the corporation. The exorbitant delay in uploading the resolutions has caused suspicion amid the public. If the corporation hasn’t violated any norm, then why are they delaying the process even after the ombudsman’s direction? When the corporation is ready to give copies of the resolutions under RTI act, why can’t they upload them in their website?”
The civic body officials said that they have started processing the documents. “They will be uploaded in the website at the earliest,” an official said.
