Bangalore
Mirror: Bangalore: Saturday, 22 November 2014.
BDA failed to
provide information on how many RTI applications were filed before it in a
particular period.
Let alone
evasive or tangential information by government agencies or departments in
replies to queries under the Right To Information (RTI) Act; this one takes the
cake.
Bangalore
Development Authority (BDA) has not been able to provide an answer to queries
by an RTI activist about applications it had received and information it had
provided to such applications between January 1, 2005, and September 30, 2011.
The RTI application
was made by activist ARS Kumar who had sought the information from all the PIOs
in BDA in September 2011. The information sought was meant to throw light on
the effective implementation of the RTI Act in BDA. But BDA did not give out
the information.
Kumar lodged
a complaint with the information commission in October 2011, and the hearing of
the case commenced in May 2012. Notices were issued to 11 PIOs of various wings
in BDA.
However, as
none of them appeared before the commission, show-cause notices were issued to
all of them. The information commission then asked the errant BDA officials to
pay fines to the tune of Rs 5,000 each by June 11, 2014.But as only one
official, Indudhar, law officer, BDA, paid the fine on that day, the commission
set November 19 as the date for the rest to pay up.
On the same
day (June 11), the commission penalised two more officers - Sunder Raj, AEE,
infrastructure division III and MC Somesh, PIO, peripheral ring road - with the
same amount of fines each.
On Wednesday,
five BDA officials - G Nagraj, assistant commissioner and PIO (east); CV
Nagaraj, executive engineer, east division, Bangalore; CManjappa, engineer
officer I; TD Nanjundappa, engineer officer II; and Gowdaiah, engineer officer
V - paid penalties for failing to provide information. Four others - an
executive engineer and PIO, infrastructure division 1(unnamed); NP
Ramachandraiah, AEE (assistant executive engineer) housing project division; R
Vijay Kumar, AEE, Infrastructure division VII; and Raghavan, engineer officer
III - are yet to pay.
Two others
have filed applications to drop penalty orders against them. The commission has
posted the case to February 27, 2015. "They have neither provide
information to applicants, nor bothered about applications. The response from
senior officials and penalties is an indication to the same," Kumar said.
Fight for
information
Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) has not
been able to provide an answer to queries by RTI activist ARS Kumar about
applications it had received and information it had provided to such
applications between January 1, 2005, and September 30, 2011. The information
sought was meant to throw light on the effective implementation of the RTI Act
in BDA.