The Indian Express: Haryana: Sunday, July 01, 2018.
Even before
waiting for the outcome in the RTI case seeking property details of IAS and IPS
officers, the officials of Haryana government have weeded out the files
concerned. A division bench of the commission has expressed its displeasure to
the officers of government and police department for weeding out the files
before the outcome of the cases pending before the Punjab and Haryana High
Court and the panel.
The division
bench consisting State Information Commissioners Hemant Atri and Yoginder Paul
Gupta, in their order pronounced on Friday, directed the State Public
Information Officers (SPIOs) of the state government’s Personnel Department and
Director General of Police office to re-construct the files with the help of
the applicants as well as the commission’s secretariat.
The case was
heard on June 26 but the order was pronounced on Friday.
During the
course of the hearing, according to the commission’s order, Personnel
Department’s SPIO-cum-Superintendent Sumer Singh Yadav and the Police
Department’s SPIO-cum-Superintendent Bharat Bhushan submitted that “the files
of the present cases had been weeded out”. Four cases were clubbed for hearing
into the matter.
An RTI
activist, PP Kapoor, had approached the Commission after the government did not
share property details of the IAS and IPS officers. Apart from Kapoor, officers
of Home Department were also present when the case was heard on June 26.
It came to
the notice of the commission bench that members of the India Administrative
Service (IAS), Indian Police Service (IPS) and perhaps other central services
are already submitting their annual immovable property returns to the
departments concerned. “These returns are being put on the websites of the
respective departments,” observed the commission. The bench felt that “the view
of the Haryana Government be sought on the feasibility of making a similar
provision for its employees, particularly gazetted officers”.
The
commission asked to seek comments of the Chief Secretary within six weeks.
Speaking to
The Indian Express on Saturday, Kapoor said, “A large number of IAS and IPS
officers don’t submit their property returns to the governments, hence their
details are not put up on the websites. The exercise of weeding out files even
before completion of hearing into the matter shows that the government is not
serious in disclosing property details of the IAS and IPS officers.”
In response
to Kapoor’s RTI application filed in 2009, the state government had sought
consent of IAS officers to share the information but 33 IAS officers had
refused for the same while 36 bureaucrats had given their consent.
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