Economic
Times: New Delhi: Monday, 31 August 2015.
Departing
from the tradition of bringing Annual Reports in public domain, CBI is yet to
place its last year's report on the agency website.
Putting the
annual report, a public document, on its website was the agency's initiative to
open itself to the public and give details of its functioning including
registration of cases, their summary and also preliminary enquiries.
The website
of the agency had displayed the annual reports from the years 2009 onwards till
2013. The report of 2014 has been prepared but not been posted on the website
even now, sources said.
A query sent
to Joint Director (Policy) R S Bhatti, who handles the department maintaining
the website and all policy related matters, remained unanswered.
The posting
of annual reports was an initiative of the then Director A P Singh, who
favoured transparency in the functioning of the agency. The tradition continued
during the time of his successor Ranjit Sinha.
The posting
of annual reports on the website of the agency have also been cited by RTI
activists to make case for disclosing information by the agency under the
transparency law as despite being exempted under the law, it is bound to
disclose information related to allegations of corruption.
The agency
had contested the orders of the CIC asking it to disclose information related
to corruption case.
Former Chief
Information CommissionerSatyananda Mishra had clarified that wording of
exemption clause saying it casts an obligation on CPIO of the exempted
organisation to entertain all requests of information pertaining to allegations
of corruption or human rights violations.
"It does
not make any distinction between the exempted organisations on the basis of the
functions they perform nor between allegations of corruption on the basis of
whether it is made against the employees of the exempted organisations or
against others," he had said.
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