The Hindu: Coimbatore: Wednesday, June 13, 2018.
June 14, 2018
will mark the end of the year that the Coimbatore Corporation has kept the
city's residents in the dark about the resolutions passed by the Coimbatore
Corporation Commissioner in his capacity as the Special Officer.
The last time
the Coimbatore Corporation uploaded a resolution on its website was on June 14,
2017. There has been no update thereafter from the civic body. This has ensured
that the city's residents are in the dark about how the Corporation has spent
and proposes to spend the crores of rupees it collects from them by way of
property tax, water charges, and other levy.
This is
denial of basic right, charges consumer activist K. Kathirmathiyon. If the
Special Officer has the same powers of the Corporation Council, it implies that
he has the same duties of the Council as well. And, by implication, the Special
Officer has to ensure that the resolutions he has passed are made public in the
same way as that of the Council.
The
Corporation keeping citizens in the dark appears deliberate as it has refused
to even show to a Right To Information Act activist the details of resolutions
the Special Officer has passed in the last 12 months.
The activist,
S.P. Thiyagarajan, says in response to his petition of April 26, 2018 under
Section 6(i) of the Act to view the 129 resolutions the Special Officer has
passed between June 2017 and April 2018, the Corporation replied that viewing
digitised copies of files in computer was not permitted. To view files, if the
applicant were to state the time he were to take to view the files and then pay
the fee at Rs. 5 an hour, the Corporation would then specify the date and time
when he could view the files.
Commenting on
the reply, Mr. Thiyagarajan said it was illegal on the part of the Corporation
to say so because only if he were to view the files, would he be in a position
to say how much he would like to have. And, then he could pay whatever the
Corporation wanted.
But this is
not his first encounter with the Corporation on the subject. He had filed the
first RTI query in December 2017 with the Corporation to view just the list of
subjects placed before the Special Officer for approval.
Evasive reply
to the query and the demand for Rs. 13,060 to furnish copies of the resolutions
when the he had only asked for the list of subjects (index) forced him to
appeal to the Deputy Commissioner, Coimbatore Corporation.
After getting
a similar reply on the appeal, Mr. Thiyagarajan said he had moved the State
Information Commission and was yet to hear from them. He had also moved the
Tamil Nadu Local Bodies Ombudsman complaining against the Corporation for not
uploading resolutions on its website.
His fight,
Mr. Thiyagarajan said, only showed how obdurate was the Corporation in sharing
the resolutions, which it should have done without anyone asking for it under
the provisions of the RTI Act.
Mr.
Kathirmathiyon said it reflected very badly on the Corporation and made
citizens suspicious even if the civic body had nothing to hide.
Corporation
Commissioner and Special Officer K. Vijayakarthikeyan said there was no
specific reason for not uploading the resolution details on the website. In
fact, he had sought for updating the website by having current progress of
works made and once that was done, the resolutions also should be available in
the open.
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