against errant officials while having no power to do so
PICTURE THIS: Between March 2007 and October 2010, the Central
Information Commission set aside, dropped or modified 12 of its own
orders in which it had penalised several public officials for
violating the RTI Act. Worse still, the CIC does not know under what
provisions it reviewed its own decisions. According to documents
available with GOI Monitor, the CIC showed leniency on errant
officials belonging to prominent public authorities such as the
National Crime Records Bureau, Indira Gandhi National Open University,
Labour Commission, Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital, Chandigarh
Administration and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi.
What is noteworthy, however, is that the CIC does not have any
authority to review its own decisions. The power lies with the High
Court. For instance, all this time when the CIC was reducing or
quashing penalties, various high courts of the country were also busy
reviewing several decisions of the CIC in which penalty amounts had
been imposed on public officials.
When asked through another RTI application to list the provisions
under which penalty proceedings had been dropped or modified, the CIC
replied: "You may take legal opinion in the matter. CPIO is not
competent to interpret the provisions of the Act." The reply was
undersigned by the deputy secretary and joint registrar, CIC.
Though the waived off penalty amount of Rs 2.35 lakh may seem
negligible, the action has far reaching consequences because the
penalty provision is provided in the RTI Act to deter officials from
hiding or providing false information. However, the leniency showered
by information commissioners on the errant public officials is well
known. According to a study done by the Public Cause Research
Foundation, the rate of penalty imposition by information
commissioners across India was barely 3 per cent in 2009-10 which
resulted in a loss of Rs 86 crore to the state exchequer. The actual
loss figures may be much higher because the study did not take into
account seven more provisions to impose penalty other than delay in
providing information.
The fact that CIC has been acting lenient on the negligent public
officials can be gauged from the 2009 case of P.C. Sekhar Vs. New
India Assurance Company Limited. In its final decision, the CIC
imposed a penalty of Rs 25,000 on the CPIO N K Singh for delay in
transmission of information to the applicant. Singh asked the CIC to
review its decision and an internal inquiry was marked by the CIC to
be done by the CMD of New India Assurance Company Limited.
The report submitted by the CMD supported the CPIO and instead blamed
one of his subordinates, Shailendra Shukla, for "holding on to the
information and also keeping his superiors entirely in the dark on the
issue". Shukla, it was further claimed, had since quit the company and
was not traceable. Notably, the same information was not provided to
the CIC when it had first issued a show cause notice to the CPIO on
why the penalty amount should not be imposed on him. However, the
commission still took mercy on the CPIO and dropped the entire penalty
proceedings.
In another case Mehar Singh Vs Under Secretary (Home), UT Chandigarh,
CIC imposed a penalty of Rs 25,000 on the CPIO for delay of 100 days
in providing the information. The CPIO filed a review petition
claiming that other officials in the UT Administration should be held
responsible for the delay since the information requested pertained to
their departments and they did not furnish it to her on time. CIC
asked the concerned department heads to fix responsibility. Thereafter
two other officials were additionally held responsible for the delay
but the department heads claimed they were diligent in their work and
hence should not be penalised. The CIC again took mercy and observed
that since no single authority could be identified for the delay the
penalty proceedings could be set aside.
Besides the inadequacy shown in reviewing the penalties, CIC has also
been negligent in following up the disciplinary action recommended
against the officials who persistently fail to accept RTI application
or provide information.
There were total of 21 officials belonging to top ministries and
departments including the Ministry of Home Affairs, Indian Air Force,
Ministry of Agriculture and Delhi Development Authority (DDA) who had
been recommended for disciplinary action by the CIC between October
2005 and December 2010.
No records regarding the action taken by concerned departments on the
recommendations of CIC are maintained. In fact, the departments are
not even asked if any action had really been taken to punish those who
violate the RTI Act.
Such an attitude of the CIC would only help undermine the cause of
transparency and accountability as envisaged under the RTI Act.
Visit www.goimonitor.com for more info
See the documents accessed through RTI by GOI Monitor here:
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B8HgtOxJw4dVOWQ0ZWZjNzAtYzRlZS00YWY0LWIwZTktN2IxZWQwM2E2ODk3&hl=en_US
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