All Raj Bhavans across the country and even the Rashtrapati Bhavan come under the purview of the Right to Information Act which was enacted to ensure Transparency and Accountability in Governance.
But for over a decade Goa Raj Bhavan has not been submitting itself to this Transparency law by strangely claiming that it is not a ‘Public Authority’. There is need to rectify this decade long anomaly and ensure that our Raj Bhavan does not remain the sole Raj Bhavan in the country, not complying with this much needed law. The Raj Bhavan must lead by example in ensuring transparency and openness in Governance within the State of Goa by not depriving information to citizens.
In recent times good governance in Goa has been lacking with trust between the people and the government at an all-time low. So this single act of empowering the people to obtain information from the Raj Bhavan, the highest public institution in the State and respecting the rule of law will send a powerful message of reinstatement of good governance in the state with a citizen-centric approach of transparency, openness and accountability. It would be in the best interests of the democratic principles and the Constitutional mandate of the RTI Act.
