Right to know the Centre: Post office your first stop

Taken literally, this would have required Central departments, organisations and PSUs to appoint a countrywide network of APIOs at the sub-district level merely to receive RTI applications and forward them to superiors.

Since most Central bodies do not necessarily have a presence in each and every district, they would have had to recruit hundreds of officers just to comply with this.

Luckily, the very ministry responsible for incorporating such a flawed provision in the Act found a way out with the help of the Postal Department, which, given the nature of its work, has a readymade network across the country.

On October 6, the Personnel Ministry sent an office memo to all other ministries informing them that the Postal Department has agreed to play the role of an APIO for everybody.

The Personnel Ministry asked all the other ministries to send ‘‘urgently’’ the addresses of ‘‘the nodal officers’’ to who the APIOs of the Postal Department can forward the applications for information.