CMO does not keep records of complaints filed

Bhanu Pratap Singh, TNN, Nov 30, 2010,

JAIPUR: There's some strange news for the vigilant citizens who believe the chief minister's office (CMO) follows their complaints against corruption religiously. The CMO maintains no permanent record of the complaints received or action taken on them. In fact, it destroys such documents with the change of government.

So, if a citizen wants to know the fate of his complaint that yielded no results, the CMO is in no position to tell what went wrong, leave alone fix accountability of the government officials for the inaction.

The admission was made by the CMO itself in response to a query made under the right to information (RTI) Act by a Jaipur resident, Sanjay Sharma. The resident sent a series of complaints to the CMO in 2008 and 2009 seeking probe and action against bureaucrats allegedly involved in land grabbing in Jaipur, officials responsible for benefiting liquor barons whose excise duties running into crores of rupees were ignored for years and those responsible for withholding public utility projects for which financial sanctions had already been made.

When nothing seemed to happen against the accused, Sharma moved an application under the RTI Act seeking details of the actions taken by the CMO on his complaints. On November 10, the ministerial secretariat sent a reply to Sharma and the Rajasthan information commission whose intervention only could get the response that the CMO was unable to tell whatever happened to the complaints. And the queer reason quoted in secretariat communiqué was: "The CMO is not an administrative department that keeps permanent records of the received documents/ letters." The deputy secretary in the CMO who was instructed to look for the information sought by Sharma, concluded in his inquiry report that complaints received in the CMO were simply forwarded to the department concerned for "action as demanded (by the complainant)". The department concerned then sends its remarks, based on which the CMO gives directions for "necessary action as per law".

What has surprised the RTI activists is the CMO's cold declaration that "as per the general tradition" these documents were destroyed with the change of government. The communiqué reasons, "Since the complaint (by Sharma) was made during the tenure of the previous government, it is not possible to have the related records in the CMO now".

Shocked at the reply, Sharma said, "Under what provision the CMO has been destroying these documents. Every complaint/letter/application received by the CMO becomes a public document, which cannot be erased arbitrarily." The resident said, "It's like the CMO shirking any accountability. Will the government officials now take the common man seriously after learning that the CMO maintains no records of the complaints received by it, even if action has been ordered on them?"