BMC pulls RTI down, puts junior officials on task

The indifference on the part of the government servants may soon sound the death knell for the Right to Information (RTI) Act in Maharashtra, the very state where the RTI movement took roots.

The RTI users, who have long been complaining about the delay in receiving information, now allege that the replies they are finally receiving are from junior-level officers and lacks in seriousness.

Latest in case is the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), which is giving Mumbaikars a plethora of reasons to file Right to Information petitions (RTIs) but finds it convenient to pass on the queries to junior officials.

RTI activists claim that the BMC action of putting junior officials on the job of Public Information Officers in most of its departments is in violation of the spirit of the RTI Act as it leads to poor quality of replies.

The BMC, in the past ten years, has released a number of circulars on dropping the designation of the Public Information Officers (PIOs) and the Appellate officers (the first appeal officer) from many of its important departments, indicating a dip in the priority accorded to the RTI responses.

During introduction of the RTI, it was indicated that the head of the department would be the PIO and Director the Appellate officer. However, down the years the designation of the PIOs has come down. RTI activists say the senior officers are running away from the responsibilities by shifting the work to the junior officers.

The BMC has 67 departments including the 24 wards, and in more than half of the departments the posts of the PIOs are dropped. The circulars pertaining to these are released by the General Administration department signed by Chief Personnel Officer, Deputy Municipal Commissioner (General Administration) and Additional Commissioner (General Administration).

"This is due to the heavy work load of chief engineers," said an official from the General Administration Department.

No, says a former senior BMC official. "It's not the work load, the officers want to shift the responsibility," he said.

During appliance of the RTI, the Chief Engineers were the PIOs and the Appellate officer the Directors. However, today in many important departments it has dropped by three levels to Assistant Engineer as the PIO and Executive Engineer as the Appellate officer. At ward level, while the Deputy Municipal Commissioner was earlier the Appellate officer now it's the Executive Engineer who is the Appellate officer.

Bhaskar Prabhu, an RTI activist who is also the member of the advisory committee of the BMC formed to look into the RTI appeals, said, "The Act doesn't specify the grade of the officers who should be appointed as PIOs. The BMC administration too is not showing concern about the grade of its PIOs and whether they have received sufficient training or possess required information." The civic body is also not sincere about the suggestions given by the advisory committee to early disposal of RTI queries.

"The main objective was to provide administrative information, solve queries in a time-bound manner, improve transparency etc. These are not to be seen in the case of BMC, which has the highest RTI queries in any government agency in the state. The senior officers are not interested to take responsibility as PIOs, as the queries have to be answered in stipulated time," said Anil Galgali, another RTI activist.

BMC Deputy Municipal Commissioner Kiran Achrekar denies the charges. "We realised that some PIOs are burdened with work and hence decided to appoint more officials. All these years, we have been releasing circulars regarding such appointments. Gradually, many changes took place in the case of PIO, Appellate officer posts as well."