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Info Commissioners making mockery of RTI?
Some Information Commissioners seem to be making a mockery of the intent of the Right to Information Act by ritualistically serving show-cause notices to Public Information Officers (PIOs) who have failed to give relevant information to applicants under the RTI and not levying fine on them.
Hyderabad: Some Information Commissioners seem to be making a mockery of the intent of the Right to Information Act by ritualistically serving show-cause notices to Public Information Officers (PIOs) who have failed to give relevant information to applicants under the RTI and not levying fine on them.
There are also Information Commissioners who allegedly serve show-cause notices to pin down PIOs as a way to meet their selfish goals, without being aimed at punishing the errant officers.
Further, there are cases where show-cause notices are served as eye-wash to pacify the applicants concerned.
This became evident when the AP Information Commission’s (APIC) PIO rejected an application filed under RTI by Mahesh of Chittoor district seeking details of show-cause notices served on errant PIOs and fines levied on them.
The PIO rejected furnishing of the information on the grounds that they were exempted under Section 8(1) (j) of the RTI (third party information).
Section 8(1) (j) says that the information which cannot be denied to Parliament or a State Legislature shall not be denied to any person.
Earlier, former State Information Commissioner S Prabhakar Reddy set an example for others to follow by feeding the extent of show-cause notices served and amounts levied as fines and collected into the portal: www.apic.gov.in
The purpose of a majority of the SICs in not feeding the show-cause notices into the website is to make the PIOs to dance to their tunes and fulfil their personal needs.
Replying to another application filed under the RTI by Mahesh, the PIO of APIC went on record stating that of the seven Information Commissioners, four did not impose any penalty on errant PIOs.
The question that beats RTI activist of Chittoor district Subrahmanyam Reddy is: “Why is the State Information Commission protecting the PIOs who didn’t pay penalties imposed by the Information Commissioners by not disclosing their details? Still, they are giving paper statements to boost their image."
