Bombay High Court directs Maharashtra government to resolve charity commissioner's website issues

The Bombay High Court has issued a directive to the Maharashtra government and the commissioners office to address the serious problems with the commissioners website and ensure its immediate functionalityWhile the charity commissioners office said the state government was not assisting in the proper operation of the website the governments Maharashtra Information Technology Corporation Ltd MAHA IT stated that the commissioners office had not provided the requisite informationAs reported by PTI in orders issued earlier this month a bench of Justices Girish Kulkarni and Advait Sethna at the Bombay High Court instructed the charity commissioners office to assign an officer to communicate with MAHA IT and make sure that all websiterelated concerns were resolvedThe High Court said that It appears that there are serious problems with the website of the charity commissioner HC saidFurthermore the court also noted that although the charity commissioners office had submitted a report its website was functional and the aforesaid was untrueThe Bombay High Court bench was hearing a petition filed by Shraddha More Sharddha More raised concerns about the nonavailability of the option to efile cases before the designated officers under the state charity commissionerWhen the matter was put up in the High Court the charity commissioner then submitted a report to the court stating that the organisations website had been operational since August 2016 and the MAHA IT was managing itWhile submitting his report the charity commissioner stated that charity organisations require around 500 GB of space per month on the server of the State Data Centre However the same was not being provided and hence the website was nonfunctional on several daysAs per the report the charity commissioners office has also issued a written letter to the state information and technology and the law and judiciary departments The letter from the charity commissioners office requested the space on the serverThe report also said that Recently 1499 TB space was provided but the website remained nonfunctional due to some technical issues It also added that these issues were resolved and the website is now functioning smoothlyIt further said that the charity commissioners office has started preparing a new website through a competent agencyFurthermore the MAHA IT informed the HC bench that the charity commissioners office had delayed responses on various issues leaving it unable to complete critical workAddressing the petitioners complaint the court then asked the charity commissioner to appoint an officer to work with MAHA IT personnel on an annual maintenance contractAll necessary requirements to upgrade the server and install uptodate technical requirements shall be completed as expeditiously as possible and within three weeks the court orderedThe Maharashtra government was also ordered by the court to furnish prompt financial support for the server upgrading and cloud space acquisitionThe bench noted that the assistant or deputy charity commissioner was not updating the data on the websiteThe charity commissioner is directed to direct all its officersstaff to update the data of all the proceedings and there ought not to be any delay in the uploading of such orders andor proceedings the court said on the ongoing matterAdding to it the High Court also said that the government and the charity commissioners office must submit their compliance affidavits by June 11th when the bench scheduled a followup sessionThe high court stated that parties were allowed to file their proceedings manually or offline until the next hearing because the website was not operationalWith PTI InputsatOptionskeyd0ddb8ef8f1a62a8cdd22fac27fc5ea7formatiframeheight90width728params