NOVEMBER 17, 2008 Advocate duo, Rishee Ram Pokharel and Krishna Pokharel on behalf of Freedom Forum on November 16, Sunday registered an appeal in the National Information Commission (NIC), asking for taking necessary actions against the public entities for not providing information as per the Right to Information (RTI) Act and issuing order to the concerned body for the disclosure of information as demanded at the earliest.
The appeal has been registered in the NIC when the government did not provide official copy of reports of the commissions formed to probe into the killing of CPN-UML candidate from Surkhet district, constituency-1 Rishi Prasad Sharma and murder of seven Nepali citizens in Dang district on the run up to Constituent Assembly (CA) elections-2008.
Advocates Ghimire and Pokharel jointly filed separate applications regarding the incidents in the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers on September 5. The commissions formed to investigate into the incidents had submitted reports to the government in the same day on September 11.
In this connection, the office of Prime Minister sent a letter in the name of information seeker stating that the respective information is being held by Home Ministry. Another application was submitted to the then Home Secretary on October 15 when Information Officer ignored to furnish information within 15 days as per the RTI Act, Section 9 (1) despite repeated follow-up.
To this effect, Home Minister Bamdev Gautam also did not respond positively stating that the cabinet meeting will need to look into the application. Thus, it has made clear that the government is not in mood of providing public-concerned information even after the RTI Act has been in effect in Nepal.
For more information,
Freedom Forum
monitoring@freedomforum.org.np
01-4102030/ 4102022