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On June 8, 2011, the Central Information Commissioner (CIC) Shailesh Gandhi issued orders against Mother Dairy Fruit & Vegetable Pvt Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), compelling it to disclose information to the public.
Mother Dairy, which is controlled by NDDB, had earlier refused to do so.
In doing so, it struck a blow against the stand of NDDB's officials who have repeatedly claimed that they have nothing to hide.
By implication, the CIC questions the very attempts by NDDB's officials to deny the public information on its functioning.
It may be recalled, that ever since Verghese Kurien — the founder of NDDB, and the man behind Operation flood and India's milk co-operative movement — stepped down from the chairmanship of NDDB in 1998, the new chairman, Amrita Patel (now in her third five-year term) has gradually made all information on the functioning of NDDB quite difficult to access.
For a long, long time, NDDB's website had the web-page relating to its annual reports (http://www.nddb.org/ aboutnddb/annualreport.html) sporting the information that the page was "under construction".
During Kurien's tenure, all annual reports were discussed publicly through media briefings every September. All annual reports were displayed on NDDB's website, and each year's performance review was available for everyone to view.
Repeated attempts — through over a dozen communications since January this year — to get information from NDDB have been stonewalled by its officials.
In fact, it is quite curious that even the biographies and write-ups on Wikipedia have been removed (do visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki /NDDB, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amrita_Patel, and http://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Indian_Immunologicals_Limited) though it is possible that they may be restored after the appearance of this article.
Thus, effectively, NDDB has indulged in moves that have only made its workings more opaque, and even secretive.
In giving its verdict, the CIC confirmed an earlier decree of March 7, 2011, that Mother Dairy "is a public authority as defined by the RTI Act. In view of this the Appeal is allowed and the PIO [principal information officer] of Mother Dairy who would have been appointed consequent to the decision referred above is directed to provide the information to the Appellant as per the RTI Act."
The ruling was made in a mater involving Asseem Takyar, of Delhi, who wanted to know "how much it has cost to the exchequer up to the period from 01.04.2009 till 31.03.2010 in supplying the 'Pili Mater Dal and other Dais etc' to the public through all sources of selling."
Mother Dairy refused to part with this information stating that it was not a public body. But the CIC took note of the fact that there were reasons to believe that "NDDB has provided `31.71crore as loan and `13.60 crore as grant to Mother Dairy".
It also noted that NDDB is a body formed by a special Act of Parliament and had access to public funds (primarily from milk producer co-operatives).
In an earlier judgement (April 15, 2011) the CIC (Sushma Singh) also took cognisance of the fact that "all the fully paid up equity shares of Mother Dairy... are held by the NDDB and its nominees."
It also showed how "the control enjoyed by NDDB through its self-appointed board of directors over Mother Dairy is not merely supervisory but in fact complete and dominant in nature."
And it reiterated that both NDDB and Mother Dairy were public bodies, hence bound to provide information to the public. Moreover, since NDDB was allowed in 2004 to function as a public finance institution, its obligations towards transparency ought to have been a lot greater.
In fact, the very formation of subsidiaries by NDDB has been a matter of great dispute between Kurien and the producer cooperatives on the one side, and NDDB on the other. Even as late as in 2005, there were media reports which talked about how the law ministry had objected the subsidiaries (and subsidiaries of subsidiaries) being formed by NDDB.
It was aware that the Ministry of Agriculture had allowed NDDB, in 1999, to form Mother Dairy, which was then set up in 2000.
But there are experts who say that even this setting up of subsidiaries is against the spirit of the NDDB Act, which requires NDDB to "to adopt the cooperative strategy in a more effective manner on an intensive and nation-wide basis and to take such steps as may be necessary for the purposes aforesaid". The Preamble to the Act specifically refers to "cooperative strategy'' as being "a strategy evolved at Anand (Gujarat)".
NDDB's officials have not yet clarified to DNA whether the fears of the law ministry have been put to rest. |
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