So-called Citizens Charter Bill: notoriously anti-citizen
Last month only, the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances in Government of India displayed on its website the draft 'Citizens Right to Grievance Redress Bill, 2011' for inviting public opinion during 2-23 November. The said draft Bill after being laboriously rechristened into 'The Right of Citizens for the Time-bound Delivery of Goods and Services and Redressal of their Grievances Bill 2011' has been presented to Lok Sabha on 20th Dec by the very Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions which happens to be headed by the Prime Minister himself. And by all reckoning the signal is clear and loud that the framers of the Bill would like to get it passed by brute majority even if the bulk of MPs, not to speak of the public at large, are still short of grasping its critical nuances and hidden implications. They are hell bent to make it into a stand-alone law, no matter how much Anna, who wants it as an integral part of the comprehensive Lokpal package, fumes against them and their 'dubious intentions'. Leaving aside Team Anna's wise insistence on keeping the grievance redress machinery as a necessary component of the single, integrated anti-corruption system called Lokpal, the question arises, does the Citizens Charter Bill in its present shape have any potential at all to redress any citizen's grievance arising from negligence or corruption by public servants?
Besides, Anna has already voiced his loud 'no' to this Bill not only for its exemption from Lokpal's control, but also for its inherent incapacity to address to the most of the urgent, unavoidable needs of poor people, such as getting a ration card, payment of pending wages under MG-NREGA, admission of a serious patient into a public hospital, sanction of a subsidized loan to a marginal farmer or digging of a tube well in hot summer and so on and so forth. Though the Bill has provided for disposal of an 'appeal of urgent and immediate nature' on the same day or within 30 days of the appeal so made (Section 11-7), such provision is doomed to failure due to a conspicuous absence of any definition of what makes an appeal to be of 'urgent and immediate nature'. This populist provision is ill-fated to ever remain a non-starter just like the proviso to Section 7(1) of RTI Act 2005 which spaciously declared that the information concerning 'life or liberty of a person' shall be provided within 48 hours but left the crucial expressions 'life or liberty' undefined.
However, both Team Anna and NCPRI, two major critics of the Bill have missed out to locate two most unwarranted provisions the Bill proffers, on account of which the Bill even if enacted into a law shall ever remain dysfunctional from the day one of its enforcement. The first one does concern the lack of an overriding power of the proposed law as is evident from its Section 51, which reads, "The provisions of this Act shall be in addition to and not in derogation of, any other law for the time being in force." This single provision renders the entire law absolutely toothless, since there are a plethora of laws in force at both Central and State levels including some handed down since colonial times, which don't prescribe either any time limit for disposal of a grievance or any penalty against a public servant defaulting in terms of time-limit. For instance, the District Collectors do often hold weekly grievance sessions for members of public. But is there any time-limit within which a DC is required to dispose of a public grievance so received? Even if there is a time-limit prescribed for the same, can anybody do anything against the DC if and where he deviates from it? Nothing, because no such law is there to bind the DM to a time-limit in respect of disposal by him of any public grievance or to penalize the DM in the event of any inordinate delay by him in disposal of a grievance. But, look at the RTI Act 2005, which the framers of the Bill boastfully refer to as a model before them. Section 22 of the Act bestows overriding powers to its provisions vis-à-vis any other law or instrumentality of state in force. This overriding power coupled with strong penalty clause constitutes the single greatest factor that has gone into the strident success of RTI Act as seen over the years and across the country. It is now a plain truth, the proposed law on grievance redress, lacking as it does in the critically needed overriding powers, would exist as one among the numerous good-for-nothing laws on our statute book, and precisely for this reason is bound to lapse into anonymity and dysfunction right since the day one of its enforcement.
The other notorious, nay draconian provision that the proposed law on grievance redress seeks to set in motion is the one clothed in professional jargons of law in Sections 23 and 39 of the Bill, according to which all proceedings before the State and Central Public Grievance Redress Commission shall be "deemed to be judicial proceedings within the meaning of sections 193 and 228 of the Indian Penal Code and the Commission shall be deemed to be a civil court for the purposes of sections 345 and 346 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973". In plain language, Section 193 of IPC provides for 'punishment for false evidence', which may extend to 3 years of imprisonment of either description coupled with an unspecified amount of fine, while its Section 228 provides for punishment for 'Intentional insult or interruption to public servant sitting in any stage of a judicial proceeding', which may extend to six months of simple imprisonment or a fine of Rs.1000/- or both. Then, Section 345 of CrPC prescribes 'Procedures in certain cases of contempt' that may result in imposition of a fine extending to Rs.200/- and in default of its payment, simple imprisonment for maximum 1 month. Section 346 of CrPC prescribes 'Procedure where Court considers that case should not be dealt with under Section 345' and vests the Court with the power inter alia to forward the case of an offender to a Magistrate, who shall deal with the case, 'as if it were instituted on a police report'.
The moot point arises, against whom such penal provisions are directed? The framers of the Bill might argue that these are directed against the very defaulting public servants, against whom the appeals would be made by the aggrieved citizens. But taking into account the unhappy experience of how certain Information Commissioners have wrecked their vengeance against some RTI activists who were critical of their doings and decisions, it is very much likely that the above provisions would provide them an easy handle to suppress and silence the vocal section of appellants and complainants. This apprehension is not unfounded at all, especially in view of the sad fact that this author along with his activist colleague Mr. Pradip Pradhan have been subjected to a damage/defamation suit valuing Rs.1 lakh lodged by the former Chief Orissa Information Commissioner Mr.D.N.Padhi in a civil court at Bhubaneswar simply because we made exposure of his acts of corruption, inefficiency and moral turpitude through our writings circulated on various mail-groups. Even after Mr.Padhi has retired from his post since more than a year ago, the said case has been dragging on with the State Commission squandering away money from the State treasury. It is therefore very much likely that the above penal provisions made under Sections 23 and 39 of the Bill, shall be extensively abused by Padhi-like Grievance Commissioners to harass the critic-activists. Moreover, once such frightening powers of the Commissioners are whispered to the public at large, no ordinary citizen who is already let down by denial of entitlement, shall ever dare to approach the Commission for redress of his grievance.
It is worth noting that the various professionals and activists including the present author had drawn the attention of the Ministry to the abovementioned vices of the Bill in course of their response to the official invitation during the stipulated period itself. It was however observed that the Ministry which accepted and carried out suggestions for amendment on some other matters, did stick to its guns in respect of its two basic positions i.e. (1) no to vest overriding powers to the Act, and (2) vesting draconian powers to the Commissioners to punish the vocal appellants/ complainants. The first one, to start with, shall mock the Act into a sort of 'much ado about nothing', and the second one shall in due course muzzle all voices of dissent and protest, if there be any.
(Chitta Behera, 4A Jubilee Tower, Choudhury Bazar, Cuttack-9, Orissa, Email: chittabehera1@yahoo.co.in, Mobile : 9437577546, Dated 22 December 2011)
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