An online portal for filing Right to Information (RTI) Act has been launched by the Supreme Court. Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud announced in an open court and said, “The RTI portal is ready and will start working in 15 minutes.” Soon after the announcement, a press release was released stating that the link was active. A test run was also conducted to check the activity of the link.
In case there are any problems, you can get back to me. I will be more than happy to look into it,” said CJI Chandrachud.
The provision of filing RTI applications online is only available to Indian citizens. The applicants will be required to pay a fee of RS 10 to upload the application. Online payment gateways for making the payment have been provided on the portal.
The announcement was made while hearing a plea filed by the law students Akriti Agarwal and Lakshya Purohit seeking a mechanism to file RTI applications online in the apex court.
The CJI also said that the bench is also working to make this provision more feasible for visually impaired and to grant equal access to documents filed digitally in court.
A bench comprising Justices Hima Kohli and J B Pardiwala, led by CJI Chandrachud asked senior advocate SK Rungta about the compilations submitted by other lawyers. Rungta, who is visually impaired, said, “I take it on pen drive and use it on my computer which has a braille output.” Rungta was further asked to coordinate with the the head scientist of National Informatics Centre to provide a compatible software to convert content to braille.