Hindustan
Times: Chandigarh: Saturday, 25 July 2015.
Those
safeguarding your right to information are now daggers drawn over their own
rights. In a letter written to Punjab chief information commissioner Swaran
Singh Channi, state information commissioner Surinder Awasthi has accused the
former of “allocating most important departments to himself and being
extra-generous in granting prayers of bureaucrats and police officials”.
Channi
retired as Punjab home secretary before his appointment to the information
panel while Awasthi is a former journalist. The letter, a copy of which is with
the HT, alleges that Channi has been “emboldening” public information officers
(PIOs) and complainants to get favourable decisions by appealing for transfer
of case to another bench. “The CIC being first among equals is the master of
the roster and free to allocate cases under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
But sending for files for perusal while cases are under progress and are at the
penultimate stage of adjudication and transferring them to other benches
amounts to gross interference in the functioning of the commissioners for which
the CIC has no mandate under the statute,” adds the letter.
What led
to face-off
The case
which has led to the face-off pertains to state commissioner Awasthi issuing a
show-cause notice to SAS Nagar SSP Gurpreet Singh Bhullar (SSP cum public
information officer) for “concealing” information sought by a Chandigarh
resident, Krishan Kumar Singla, claiming that a false FIR was registered
against him by the police in “connivance” with a builder on the basis of forged
papers. Singla had knocked the doors of the commission saying the information
provided in response to his application by the SAS Nagar SSP did not contain
those pages.
Later, the
requisite information was traced to the police files by the director, Bureau of
Investigation, and given to the applicant. The response of Bhullar to the
show-cause notice was taken on record on June 17 and the next date of hearing
was fixed for July 14. But before the formal orders could be put on the
commission’s website, Bhullar moved the CIC for transfer of the case to another
bench.
His request
said, “From the conversation that took place before the bench, the applicant
could gauge that the bench nurses some personal bias against him and his family
and he won’t get justice.”
Channi,
through an order dated July 9, said the case be transferred “in the interest of
justice” to another division bench and the order be placed on the commission’s
website. He subsequently wrote to the deputy registrar to get the case file
transferred from Awasthi. But the latter has dug in his heels claiming in his
letter that the CIC had no power to transfer cases from one bench to another on
the basis of “wild and concocted” allegations of bias or apprehension of
injustice.
“Since your
orders are unjust, there is no need to comply with them and I have not handed
over the file. One is at a loss to understand the undue haste shown by the CIC
in the case by throwing all conventions and precedents to the winds,” the
letter states.
The letter
also questions the working of the CIC. It says his regular orders are not put
on the website for weeks and are sent to the parties late. “However, in this
case, you have shown remarkable swiftness and said that your orders be put on
the website immediately,” it says.
Awasthi, when
contacted, said he had written the letter, but refused to comment further.
Channi did not respond to the calls and messages sent to him.
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