After complaint against power transformer sends him behind bars, he uses RTI to come out

Indian Express; Jasneet Bindra: Thu Nov 11 2010,

Chandigarh : An Amritsar-based insurance surveyor didn’t know that lodging a complaint against a faulty transformer in his locality would give him a high-voltage shock. For, instead of giving him a patient ear, a Punjab State Electricity Board (now Powercom) employee got an FIR registered against him allegedly on trumped-up charges, landing him behind bars.

Out on bail, 52-year-old Jagdish Singh decided to fight the battle using RTI. After much struggle, he succeeded not only in taking the spark out of the electricity department employee, who later filed a plea in the Punjab and Haryana High Court for quashing of the FIR, but also restored uninterrupted power supply to his locality.

“Incidentally, I was in the forefront of getting the 200 KV transformer installed in the locality three years ago. But as the load was not split, the device would often trip. I made several rounds of the department to get the fault rectified, much to the chagrin of the staff. And in July last year, when I decided to file a formal complaint, an employee picked up a fight with me,” Singh said.

He alleged the complaint register was manipulated to show the employee present even though he was absent that day, after which the FIR was registered against him for assaulting “a government servant on duty”. Singh had to stay in jail for nine days. When out on bail, he filed an RTI application in the office of Superintending Engineer, City Circle, PSEB, Amritsar, seeking copies of the complaint register to prove that the employee was made to sign only against his complaint, while for rest of the day someone else was on duty.

On not getting the information, he moved the Punjab State information Commission, where he submitted that the record was tampered with and requested that action be taken against the culprits and original records be called for.

The Senior Executive Engineer (SEE) told the commission that as it was not clear which pages had been tampered with, the complainant should examine the records. However, Singh said he had visited the SEE office at least 20 times and brought to his notice the pages that he wanted but to no avail. Information Commissioner Rupan Deol Bajaj called for the register and on noticing discrepancies such as overwriting and use of different ink, took it into the custody of the commission. She directed the public information officer (PIO) to get coloured photocopies of the pages and supply them to the complainant. The PIO was also told to pay Rs 250 as compensation to Singh, as he had to travel fruitlessly all the way from Amritsar.

Seeing his ruse exposed, Satish Kumar, who had fought with Singh, also appeared in the Commission at the next hearing and agreed to take back the case after he was confronted with the tampered record. He told the Commissioner that he was filing an application in the Punjab and Haryana High Court for quashing of the FIR. Before closing the case, Bajaj said, “The RTI Act is not meant to be used as a pressure tactic. Truth creates its own pressure and on the basis of authentic documents many problems can be sorted out.” Singh is a happy man today. “The FIR has been quashed and the transformer’s fault has also been rectified,” he smiles.