Times
of India: Chandigarh: Saturday, 30 May 2015.
It's a
classical case of bureaucratic apathy. An 87-year-old retired employee of the
Haryana government has been fighting for seven years to get information under
RTI from a department where he worked for 33 years. Finally, ex-employee of
registrar of cooperative societies office Gulab Singh approached the state
information commission, which has now passed severe strictures against the
department officials and ordered a probe.
State
information commissioner Hemant Atri on Friday asked the state principal
secretary of cooperation department to get a high-level inquiry conducted
within a limited time framework. "This is a strange case wherein the
department misplaces the files and very candidly and proudly filed an affidavit
in the commission about the same," said Atri in the order.
Gulab Singh
had filed a complaint against a senior officer of the registrar cooperative
societies in 2008. Initially, the department informed him that an inquiry
officer had been appointed to look into his complaint. Next year, the
department took a U-turn and informed Singh that his complaint was not
available in the department. Singh again provided a copy of his complaint to
the department. But he could not know fate of his complaint despite many
reminders to the department.
In 2014, the
department again said that the case file was not available in the record.
Incidentally, the state public information officer of the department is the
same official against whom the complaint was filed by Singh.
The
department informed the commission that action has been taken against three
junior employees in file missing case but Gulab Singh alleged that the
charge-sheeted employees were being made a scapegoat and the onus of missing of
complaint file lies with the higher ups in the department.
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