Panaji: The Bombay high court on Tuesday asked the director of panchayats to formulate within eight weeks a record retention policy in larger public interest. The policy will specify the duration within which all documentary and electronic records of panchayats across Goa are required to be retained.The court passed the order in a petition filed by panch of Majorda panchayat, seeking implementation of orders of the State Information Commission.The commission in Feb imposed penalties to the tune of Rs 50,000 on the public information officer (PIO), who is the secretary of the Majorda-Utorda-Calata panchayat, for denying information under the RTI Act.State information commissioner Atmaram Barve at the time also directed the chief secretary to take immediate steps for the formation of a record retention policy for documentary as well as electronic records for all authorities under the ambit of the Right to Information Act in the state.The HC observed that the commission’s order appears to be based on the premise that all CCTV footage recorded in DVRs set up in various panchayats in Goa gets overwritten within a specified time and information contained in digital form gets lost.The panch’s grievance was that the panch was unable to access CCTV footage of recordings of the panchayat since by the time the information was given by the PIO, the data on the hard disk was overwritten as the information is stored for a period of 15 days only.
