3,256 complaints, 0 penalties

RTI COMPLETES ONE YEAR PART-II

While the Right to Information Act, 2005, has the potential to focus the spotlight on everyone "" from Union minister to a ration shop dealer "" not a single violator among the 3,256 complaints received by the Central Information Commissioner in one year has been penalised.

CIC received 3,256 appeals and complaints till September 22, issued show-cause notices in 60 cases and imposed penalty only in 2 cases which were also withdrawn subsequently.

The case filed by Kusum Devi against Delhi Development Authority for denial of information shows that the sympathy of the commission seems to be with the 'bureaucracy' than with the aggrieved public.

When the Central Public Information Officer did not provide information on the daily progress of their complaints to DDA even after the first appeal, 38 residents of East Delhi filed a second appeal in CIC. The CPIO who did not appear on two hearing dates, appeared only after a show-cause notice for penalty was served on him.

Content with the CPIOs version that he took action but only failed to inform the appellants, CIC dropped the penalty. The only action that CPIO had taken was to transfer all the cases to the education department, when he was supposed to provide information.

This order has not been placed on the CIC's website and the 38 applicants are yet to receive the information, the NGO 'Parivartan' run by Magsaysay awardee Arvind Kejriwal said.

RTI activists say that this has a disastrous impact at the level of Public Information Officers. "A word has spread that nothing happens to you whether you give information or not. As a result, most of the PIOs have simply stopped responding to RTI applications. Or they just reject your application citing some section. So, almost all applications have to be taken in appeal," said Suchi Pande of National Campaign for People's Right to Information.

While people who used the Act are of the opinion that an aggressive use of penalty clause could reduce inflow of cases at CIC, the commissioner's view is different.

E A S Sarma, former secretary-expenditure in the finance ministry, said, "Penalties should be imposed in cases of violation by public information officers. This helps to wake up the government officials. Without penalties, the RTI would lose its teeth," Sarma told Business Standard from Vishakapatnam where he is running an awareness campaign on RTI and other issues.

But the commission does not see any relation between the penalty and delivery of information. "This is a flawed approach. If there are reasonable causes for delay in providing information, then what is the need of punishing the Public Information Officer?" Prof Ansari, Information Commissioner, said.

In turn, he blames the appellants for asking information on flimsy grounds. "Can I penalise an appellant for asking information which can be used for negative purposes?" he shot back. Ansari said that various departments are not well prepared for the Act as they do not have proper record maintenance mechanism till now.