Times
of India: Jalandhar: Tuesday, 16 September 2014.
State Information
Commission's (SIC) notice to the municipal corporation for failing to provide
complete information to the applicants under the RTI Act on four different
occasions has exposed the shoddy working of the civic body. The commission also
ordered a penalty of Rs 5,000 each for each time, amounting to Rs 20,000.
The orders
were handed by state information commissioner Narinderjit Singh on September 8.
While the first three complaints were filed by Congress municipal councilor
Jagdish Pal Raja, the fourth one was filed by a local shopkeeper - Subhash
Jain.
On all four
occasions, the SIC noted that public information officer (PIO) was given enough
time to answer the deficiencies pointed out by the applicants. The applicants
also contended that the information provided by the MC was incomplete. Still,
the PIO failed to respond to these deficiencies.
The
commissioner ordered that other than paying the compensation, the MC would also
respond to the deficiencies pointed out by the applicants by November 12 - next
date of hearing. The SIC also ordered that during the hearing of all four
cases, the PIO should be personally present.
RTI activist
Sanjay Sehgal said the MC would be paying the compensation from public money,
instead the responsibility should be fixed and amount should be recovered from
the guilty officials. "Attitude of the MC officials is to harass the
applicants as they have several things to conceal. However, these orders have
exposed the working of the civic body," he said.