Petition to bring governor’s office under RTI purview

PANAJI: Advocate Aires Rodrigues has petitioned governor P S Sreedharan Pillai to bring the Raj Bhavan under the purview of the Right to Information Act, 2005.
Rodrigues in a letter to the governor stated that all Raj Bhavans across the country and even the Rashtrapati Bhavan come under the purview of the act, which was enacted to ensure transparency and accountability in governance.
For over a decade the Goa Raj Bhavan has not been submitting itself to this claiming that it is not a public authority in terms of the act.
The last petition filed by Goa Raj Bhavan claiming that it is not a public authority is pending before the Supreme Court since 2019.
When the issue was raised with the Goa State Information Commission, it held that the Goa governor’s office is a public authority under the act. This was challenged by the office in the high court of Bombay at Goa after which the office then approached the SC filing a transfer petition in 2018 stating that there is another matter of similar nature pertaining to the applicability of the RTI Act to the attorney general pending before the Apex Court.