Financial Express: New Delhi: Tuesday,
May 24, 2016.
Delhi-based
Jagpal had sought information on a number of queries related to ground handling
work through his RTI application filed in 2013 but satisfactory responses were
claimed to have not been furnished and the application kept getting transferred
from one authority to another including Air India and Airports Authority of
India.
The Central
Information Commission has pulled up Civil Aviation Ministry for “casual and
callous approach” in handling Right to Information applications which it said
“defeats the spirit” of the law for empowering citizenry.
Chief
Information Commissioner Bimal Julka made these hard-hitting observations while
hearing the case where the ministry could not satisfactorily answer queries on
ground handling services such as “Which out of these are part of Central
Government (i) Indian Airlines (2) BWFS (3) AirIndia SETS (4) CELBI”.
Delhi-based
Jagpal had sought information on a number of queries related to ground handling
work through his RTI application filed in 2013 but satisfactory responses were
claimed to have not been furnished and the application kept getting transferred
from one authority to another including Air India and Airports Authority of
India.
When the
matter reached Julka, he said, representatives from various arms of the
ministry were represented in great strength but none could satisfactorily reply
to the queries raised by the applicant.
“It appeared
to be an exercise of musical chairs without owning responsibility for the
information sought by the applicant. The representatives of Civil Aviation
Ministry were also not able to reply in the matter,” he said.
Directing the
ministry to provide information within 15 days, he said, while observing the
text of the deliberations held during the hearing, it appeared that the matter
had been dealt with in a “most casual manner with total disregard to the spirit
of the Act”.
“This casual
and callous approach of the M/o Civil Aviation and the organisations working
under its ambit is very pathetic and disgraceful which defeats the spirit of
empowering citizenry in accordance with the provisions of the RTI Act,” he
said.
The
Information Commissioner directed the Central Public Information Officer, Civil
Aviation Ministry, to seek explanation of the officer regarding the approach
adopted by him in passing the buck rather than attending to the RTI
applications in a diligent manner.
Jagpal had
raised a number of issues through his RTI application which included
information on directions for staff working for domestic and international
airlines from DGCA, policy of ground handling licensing, violation of DGCA’s
policy of allowing only three ground handling companies to operate.
He had also
sought to know why foreign companies cannot deploy ground handling staff,
besides information on the reason behind the staff of Delhi Airport operator
not being asked to do such duties.