The Sub-Clause (a) of Clause 7 of the Orissa Draft Bill provides for the first appeal of the aggrieved information seeker, to be made to the boss of the Department to which the concerned information officer belongs. With such a provision, the appeal has no meaning because the boss of the Department shall but defend the order of his sub-ordinate officer. So such provision may be deleted.

The Sub-Clause (d) of Clause 7 - It says, ".... endeavour shall be made to dispose of the appeal within 45 days'. The word 'endeavour' should be deleted, otherwise the provision shall not serve any purpose.

The Clause 8 ( Obligations on Competent authorities) - The Delhi RTI Act 2001 in its Clause 4 ( Obligations on Public Authorities) has better provisions on this count. It says,

    " Obligations on public authorities- Every public authority shall-

1. maintain all its records, in such a manner and form as is consistent with its operational requirements duly catalogued and indexed;
2. publish at such intervals as may be prescribed by the Government-
    
   1. the particulars of its organization, functions and duties;
   2. the powers and duties of its officers and employees and the procedure followed by them in the decision making process;
   3. the norms set by the public authority for the discharge of its functions;
   4. laws, bye-laws, rules, regulation, instructions, manuals and other categories of records under its control used by its employees for discharging its functions
   5. the details of facilities available to citizens f obtaining information; and
   6. the name, designation and other particulars of the competent authority
       
3. publish all relevant facts concerning important decisions and policies that affect the public while announcing such decisions and policies;
4. give reasons for its decisions, whether administrative or quasi-judicial to those affected by such decisions;
5. before initiating any project, publish or communicate to the public generally or to the persons affected or likely to be affected by the project in particular, the facts available to it or to which it has reasonable access which, in its opinion, should be known to them in the best interests or maintenance of democratic principles."

The Orissa Draft Bill should reframe its provision after the pattern of the above provision contained in the Delhi Act.

Clause 9 ( Penalties): This provision is a must. The penalty however should be realised from the Competent Authority, for instance, from the BDO in case of a Block Office, from the Collector in case of a Collectorate, and the like.

Compensation( A new Provision to be added): The Compensation is to be given to the information seeker, who has been unjustly denied information or has been served with misleading information or has been served with information after the deadline is over. The Compensation aims at making good the trauma that the information seeker had undergone due to the negligence willful or otherwise of the Competent Authority. The amount of Compensation is to be recovered from the penalty charged against the defaulting Competent Authority. This idea of Compensation came up during the Consultation organised by CARE at Bhubaneswar.

Para 2 of Sub- Clause (b ) of Clause 5 ( Restrictions on Right to Informaion) says inter alia that the papers submitted to the Governor for discharge of his Constitutional functions, shall be withheld from the disclosure. This provision seems unwarranted, since every citizen has a right to know how the Governor assesses the situation of a State under Article 356 of the Constitution. Similarly every citizen has a right to know how the Centre-State Relations work out on a particular issue. So the exemption kept in the Draft Bill under this Sub-clause should be deleted.