New Delhi, Oct 15 The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has not digitised any documents or records, according to a Right to Information (RTI) response, amid scrutiny in the Delhi High Court over the online disclosure of its records.
The RTI response to PTI came amid a petition seeking the publication of the MCD’s legislative records, proceedings of its House and resolutions passed by its standing committees on a public portal.
In its reply dated October 8, the public information officer of the MCD’s IT Department stated, “No records digitised by the IT department headquarters MCD.”
A petition filed by Centre For Youth Culture Law And Environment (CYCLE) is before the Delhi High Court.
The RTI response raised questions about the progress of the digitisation process, particularly after the civic body earlier told the court that work in this regard was under way, according to the account of the proceedings.
The case began after petitioner Paras Tyagi, founder of CYCLE, sought information on the rules governing the online publication of MCD resolutions.
“The system of record keeping is opaque. Recently after the Satya Niketan building collapse, we wanted to see the layout plan of the area. Since the area layout plans are not available digitally we were not able to access it and we don’t know whether they are present or not,” Tyagi said.
The civic body had initially stated that no such rules existed, referring to Section 86 of the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act, 1957, which provides for access to records through physical inspection and certified copies.
During a hearing on February 4, a division bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia had pulled up the civic body over failing to upload and update public documents for over 20 years, in violation of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005.
Later, on February 24, the MCD’s IT Department floated a tender on the Government e-Marketplace (GeM) portal to engage an agency for scanning and digitising historical records dating back to 1957.
In its reply affidavit before the court, the civic body argued that Section 4 of the RTI Act does not require the immediate online publication of all historical committee proceedings. It maintained that allowing physical inspection of records under Section 86 of the DMC Act met the applicable legal requirements.
The MCD also cited the scale of the task, saying the digitisation of nearly seven decades of municipal records would require substantial administrative and financial resources. The process was further complicated by the corporation’s trifurcation and subsequent reunification, it said.
The latest RTI response, however, informs that no digitisation has been carried out at the IT Department headquarters of MCD. The matter is expected to come up for further consideration as the court examines the civic body’s obligations regarding public access to its records.
(PTI News)
