Right to Service Act-framing rules-suggestions

Note: Kerala becomes the 12th state in the country to have a Right to Service Act. It has been reported in the media that a committee has been constituted under an additional chief secretary to draft the rules for the implementation of the Act. This blog is a copy of a suggestion submitted for consideration by the Committee. The suggestion may look silly to casual readers but those who have approached a public servant ever would know.

from:     Ravindran P M raviforjustice@gmail.com
to:     chiefsecy@kerala.gov.in
cc:     chiefminister@kerala.gov.in, cm-grccell@kerala.gov.in
date:     Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 8:08 AM
subject:     Right to Service Act-framing rules-suggestions

This suggestion is based on a report in the Malayala Manorama of 28 Jul 2012 that Ms Nivedita P Haran, Additional Chief Secretary is heading a committee to draft the rules for the Right to Service Act.

From what I understand about this Act as reported in the media, there is a loaded condition for getting the services under this Act- that is 'if the application is complete in all respects....'. Now what makes this loaded against the citizen is that even now the major hurdle faced by citizens is the  number of times he is made to visit the service provider due to flimsy observations made each time- like the i not being dotted the first time, and the t not being crossed the second time and so on until the citizen applicant is forced to grease palms. And if the palm is greased none of these or even graver shortcomings are taken cognisance of.

Hence the following suggestion is made for consideration by the Committee.

Every application should be received and receipt acknowledged. The service provider should intimate all the deficiencies to the applicant in the receipt itself. The applicant should be allowed to resubmit the application after correcting all these deficiencies immediately or submit a fresh application later with all these deficiencies corrected, without any additional fees.

Provided that the applicant will not be held responsible for any deficiencies in the original application that had not been indicated to the applicant and hence remain uncorrected.

Yours truly

P M Ravindran
Kalpathy-678003
Tel: 0491-2576042