Citizens Right to Grievance Redress Draft Bill 2011- Some actionable anomalies
It is a welcome move on the part of the Centre to float the Citizens Right to Grievance Redress Draft Bill 2011 in the public domain (http://darpg.gov.in/MarqueeHtmFile.aspx?CatId=40) w.e.f. 2nd Nov for the purpose of inviting public opinion receivable by 23rd Nov 2011. The first reaction of many a reader to the official notice is that considering its critical significance for millions of common people on one hand and for the entire bureaucracy of the Centre and States on the other, the time-limit set for the public response is too short and needs to be suitably extended so as to enable the interested persons to send in their informed views to the Government.
First of all, one needs to acknowledge the merits of the central draft bill vis-à-vis the kindred laws enacted by various States like MP, Bihar, Delhi, Punjab and Uttarakhand. While the State Acts limit their applicability to a few services shortlisted in the Schedules appended thereto, the Central Draft Bill in its Section-4 proposes to cover the entire gamut of goods and services, as would be specified in the Citizens' Charter by each public authority from Panchayat to PMO across the country. Then, unlike the State Acts, each of which applies to the shortlisted public authorities functioning under their respective domains, the Central draft bill, going by its definition of 'Appropriate Government' in Section-2(b) would bind all the Governments- Centre, States and UTs- to implement the law. Thirdly, though the State Acts are purported to tackle both negligence and corruption hindering the time bound service-delivery processes, none of them offers any definite mechanism as to how to handle the factor of corruption, whereas the Central draft bill in Section 9(1-d) enjoins upon the Grievance Redress Officer to ascertain first of all as to which category the grievance falls under, 'willful negligence' or a prima facie case of corruption covered under Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, and thereon to report accordingly to the Head of the Department 'with a recommendation for the penalty to be imposed'. Another merit of the draft bill is the exclusion of the service matters of 'public servants' from the purview of the complaint vide Section 2(f), otherwise their complaints would consume away lion's share of the limited resources of the grievance-redress machinery, as has been sadly noticed in case of RTI Act. Given such wholesome nuances of the Central draft bill, we have now a veritable possibility of installing a single and uniform system for the whole country to ensure time-bound delivery of all manner of public goods and services to each eligible person free of hassles or corruption. This is precisely what Anna Hazare has been demanding since the start of his campaign for Jan Lokpal Bill, and Team Anna should therefore ponder over as to whether this Central draft bill, first of its kind in response to his campaign, should be taken seriously and debated across the country with a view to refashioning it as foolproof as possible.
However, as the maxim goes, all that glitters is not gold. The Central draft bill has also loopholes, several and serious, without plugging of which the draft bill on its enactment in its current avatar might prove counter-productive from a people's perspective. To start with, the very nomenclature of the bill using the word 'citizen' coupled with its Section-3 seem potential grounds for abuse by some States to deprive a bulk of population of their rights guaranteed under it. Echoing Section-3 of RTI Act 2005, the Section-3 of draft bill states, "Subject to the provisions of this Act, every individual citizen shall have the right to time bound delivery of goods and provision for services and redressal of grievances". The question arises, given such a stipulation in the draft bill, can a Cooperative, SHG, NGO, Professional Association, Educational Institution and some such collective entity, which are not 'individual citizens' per se avail their rights to time-bound delivery of public services and grievance redressal? Not at all. The next lurking danger of retaining the word 'citizen' in the draft bill is the likelihood of its abuse by the dubiously motivated States like Odisha which, for instance, compels an RTI applicant to provide a 'proof of citizenship' in the shape of Voter Card or Passport to be attached the application and thereby deprives at one go multitude of young Indians below 18 years of age who are non-voters and may not be possessing a Passport. In view of all this, the limiting expression 'citizen' may be replaced by an inclusive one i.e 'Person', which, as is well known, means not only a biological person, but also any association of persons as per Section-11 of IPC 1860.
Doubtless, in order that a law proves effective in delivering the intended results, every jargon used therein should be defined in clear and unambiguous terms leaving no space for equivocation through multiple interpretations. However, the draft bill suffers from serious anomalies on this count. For instance, quite rightly and in tune with Section 18 (3) of RTI Act, the Section 11 (3) of the draft bill vests certain powers of a civil court to the concerned 'Head of the Department of Public Authority' to enable it to exercise its functions as an appellate authority. But strangely enough, its next provision i.e Section 11(4) takes a contradictory position saying that the HoD "shall not be bound by the procedure laid down in the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 but shall be guided by the principles of natural justice". The expression 'natural justice' being a too loaded and plastic one, the HoD using its cover might act arbitrarily and whimsically caring a fig for any standard operating procedures. Moreover, the above mentioned Section 11(4) allows the discretion to the HoD 'to regulate its own procedure', which would doubtless result in endless proliferation of appeal procedures often conflicting with each other and consequently becoming incomprehensible and inaccessible to the common people.
Stipulating a timeframe for each designated authority to discharge its obligation is a sine qua non for a good law aiming at governance reform. On a close scrutiny the draft bill also suffers from conspicuous deficit on this front. While it's Section 9(1-a) provides for a timeframe of 15 days within which the concerned Grievance Redress Officer shall remedy a grievance and Section 11 (5) for a timeframe of 30 days for the next appellate authority i.e. HoD, there is no timeframe provided for the decision of an appeal made before Public Grievance Redressal Commission instituted at Central or State level (vide Sections 22 and 28). Similarly, no time-limit has been prescribed for the completion of investigation into a complaint around misbehavior or incapacity against a Commissioner at Central or State level or for action to be taken by the President or Governor as the case may be against the concerned Commissioner on the grounds of corruption or moral turpitude etc. (vide Sections 37 and 20). It is worth noting that RTI Act 2005 for all its pro-citizen features lacked in providing for time-limit in respect of these crucial matters, on account of which we notice today a huge backlog of pending cases before the Information Commissions along with a dillydallying approach of the President or Governor, as the case may be, in taking disciplinary action against the Information Commissioners complained against.
The draft bill has given a miss to another critical provision, that is, compensation to the aggrieved complainant on account of the loss or detriment he might have suffered owing to the failure of concerned public authority in ensuring time bound delivery of goods or services covered under the Citizens Charter. In fact, RTI Act 2005 in its Section 19 (8-b) enjoined upon the Information Commissioners to order such compensation in appropriate cases, and that is one of the underlying reasons for which this Act is a huge success all over. Should a similar provision make its way into the Draft Bill on Citizens Right to Grievance Redress, it would by one stroke render the latter into a far more pro-people instrument than what it is now.
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