Commissioner’s office fined 500 for furnishing wrong info

Times of India: Thane: Friday, 29 August 2014.

The Konkan division state information commissioner has slapped a fine of Rs 500 to the Thane police commissioner office for furnishing misleading information under the Right to Information Act. While hearing appeal challenging the information furnish by police under the RTI act, the state information commissioner (Konkan division), Thanksy Thekkekara, asked the Thane police commissioner office to pay the fine for giving misleading information to an RTI applicant, who had sought reasons for holding back Housing Rent Allowance of the cops for almost 10 years.

"The fine should be paid from the budgetary expenses of the Thane police commissioner's office," the order issued by Thekkekara mentioned.

The case pertained to an application filed by two retired police personnel under RTI about few year ago, seeking reasons for not releasing HRA of the police personnel in Thane region. However, the reply varied time and again. Irked with receiving contradictory reply, the applicants appealed against the RTI reply furnished to them. With ambiguity over the date from which the payment should be made the police had not paid the HRA to nearly 6K cops. Following consistent follow up by the complainants, the amount was released in 2007. Nearly 4,200 cops have received the arrears.