Government removes key features from RTI portal citing 'heavy load': Report

In an RTI response obtained by The Hindu, due to the "heavy load" on the website, the National Informatics Centre (NIC) has blocked the feature to establish new accounts on the Union government's RTI Online platform, where citizens can submit Right to Information requests to central government institutions. Additionally, the website informs users in a notification that inactive user accounts would be removed in six months.

Without account, users will have to fill personal information from beginning

Users can avoid having to provide all of their personal information, including their name, address, mobile number, and email address, for each RTI application they submit by creating an account on the portal. Without an account, newly registered users or those whose accounts have been erased must fill out all of their personal information from scratch.

Time constraints may deter users from filing RTI applications

The time constraints on the portal for filling out all of this information may deter individuals from completing applications, a Dehradun-based programmer told the Hindu, who developed a browser plugin to enable users to auto-fill their details to speed up RTI applications.

“When there is some error while filling in forms on Indian government sites, the entire data is lost,” the programmer said on the request of anonymity.

Portal not responding smoothly due to heavy load: DoPT

In its response, the DoPT, said that “as it was observed that due to the heavy load/traffic on RTI online portal, portal is not responding smoothly and leads number of RTI requests failing to succeed, therefore, in order to increase the response time and decrease the server load of RTI online portal, remedial actions” such as blocking the option to create a new account were taken. The department clarified that there was no internal order or circular documenting the change.