Do not research material before giving to citizens: Punjab to PIOs

Harpreet Bajwa: Tue Oct 19 2010: Chandigarh:

The Public Information Officers (PIOs) of the departments of the state have been directed by the Punjab Government not to do any kind of research on behalf of the citizen and to supply material only as it is when it is sought under the Right to Information (RTI).

Sources said that a letter was issued some time ago by the personnel department to all PIOs of Principal Secretaries, Financial Commissioners, Administrative Secretaries and also to all departmental heads. The letter, of which The Indian Express has a copy, states, “Some information seekers request the Public Information Officers to cull out information from some documents and give such extracted information to them. A citizen has a right to get material from a public authority. The RTI Act, however, does not require the Public Information Officer to deduce some conclusion from the material and supply the conclusion so deduced to the applicant. It means that the Public Information Officer is required to supply the material in the form as held by the public authority, but not to so research on behalf of the citizen to deduce anything from the material and then supply to him.”

“Information shall ordinarily be provided in the form in which it is sought unless it would disproportionately divert the resources of the public authority or would be detrimental to the safety or preservation of the record in question,” it states.

This letter was issued after a Jalandhar resident, Surinder Mittal, had sought information from the personnel department about foreign trips of IAS officers. It has informed the applicant that the personnel department only gives cadre clearance for foreign tours and does not keep details of the expenditure or whether the concerned official has gone on the concerned tour or not. Since the information sought pertained to different departments, it could not be provided as it was not available in that form with the personnel department.

A copy of this letter has been sent to Mittal too.

Sources said that the state government and boards and corporations have spent crores of rupees on the foreign tours of the more then 50 babus of the state in the last eight years. From watching the Athens Olympics to the cricket World Cup or studying Kenyan handicrafts, these visits have taken Punjab’s bureaucrats to countries like the USA, the UK, Canada, Brazil and Australia.