The Central Information Commission on Tuesday asked the National Informatics Center (NIC) to explain why it has no information about the creation of the Aarogya Setu application despite having its name on the application’s website. The statutory body also issued notices of demonstrative cause to several directors of public information (CPIO), as well as to the National Division of Electronic Governance (NeGD), the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and NIC for not providing a evasive answer an RTI app related to contact tracing app that has millions of users.
Taking action in response to a complaint filed by activist Saurav Das against the NIC, the Commission asked NIC CPIO Swarup Dutta to explain why a penalty under article 20 of the RTI Act should not be imposed on the Center for “obstruction prima facie information “and provide an” evasive response “to the plaintiff’s RTI request, as initially reported by LiveLaw.in, a legal case tracking site.
“The Commission orders the CPIO, NIC to explain this matter in writing about how the website https://aarogyasetu.gov.in/ was created with the domain name gov.in, if they have no information about it.” Information Commissioner Vanaja N Sarna said in the warrant.
The complaint filed by Das stated that NIC, NeGD and MeitY had not provided information on the creation of the Aarogya Setu app. The plaintiff had sought details, including the origin of the proposal for the application, as well as the details of its approval, the companies involved, the individuals and government departments included, and copies of communications between private persons involved in the development of the application. application.
In addition to instructing the government agencies included in the complaint, the Commission indicated in the decision that the CPIO of NeGD could not explain why it delayed the response to RTI’s request for almost two months and that it also reported that the information sought was not the Department is related.
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