Years of missing Right to Information applications will be restored on the Union Government’s RTIOnline portal, the website said in a message on Thursday, after The Hindu reported Wednesday that public records obtained by RTI applicants over many years had disappeared from many users’ accounts. The episode shed a light on several issues plaguing the portal, which facilitates RTI queries to most public authorities under the Union.
“Due to maintenance activity, Archival Data (Before 2022) will be available soon,” the portal said in a new message on its website. “And the archival data will be plugged into present provided reports.” This is the third time in recent months that the RTIOnline portal has gone into ‘maintenance’ mode without offering any new features or showing improvements in performance.