The State Information Commission (SIC) is the authority that is expected to ensure that the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005, is followed in letter and spirit.
He did not allow them to scrutinise commission’s files
The State Information Commission (SIC) is the authority that is expected to ensure that the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005, is followed in letter and spirit. However, on Friday, in the first-ever inspection of its own files by a bunch of RTI activists, SIC came up a cropper.
As per the RTI Act, any citizen can demand for a personal scrutiny of files under Sec 4 of the Act, and no public authority — not even the SIC — can deny inspection.
State information commissioner S Joshi told the activists that his office was busy and hence could not allow the inspection to take place. When activists requested for inspection of a fraction of what they actually wanted to inspect, Joshi said that they would be entertained only after Diwali.
The activists, including Krishnaraj Rao, Gaurang Vohra, IK Chhugani, Mohammed Afzal and Sundeep Jalan, were prompted to conduct an inspection of the SIC files, after hearing the travails of Nagendra Pandey, a slumdweller from Shivajinagar, Malad (E).
Pandey sought information of the last time his slum society conducted elections, its present members and a list of people living in his slum, which was to undergo redevelopment under the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) scheme.
Pandey filed an RTI in November 2006 with the deputy registrar and later with the appellate authority, but did not get any reply to either. “After a year, I got a date with the information commissioner in July 2008. He gave an extension of 30 days to public information officer (PIO) and now almost three months later, I still have no information. The PIO too was not fined,” he said.
Pressed with an urge to check if the authority was indeed doing its job and appeals showed any positive results, the activists decided to check on the disposal of the RTI appeals and orders passed on them from January to September 2008 on Friday.
In the meeting, Joshi, on Pandey’s issue, said, “If the person was not satisfied, he can move court.”
“Any PIO who does not provide information should cite reasons or be fined. They are given undue and unlawful leniency. Timeliness and penalty are the teeth of the Act,” he said.
Rao countered, “The commission cannot pass the buck of safeguarding RTI to the court. By this attitude, the SIC is also devaluing the sanctity of the Act.”
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