Pune Mirror; Neelambari Bhoge; Monday, November 08, 2010
Corporator’s businessman-husband didn’t expect a heap of documents 56,000 pages and a colossal amount when he filed 19 RTI queries for obtaining data on pharma deals of PCMC’s health wing. While officials are worried about the safekeep of the bundles, the applicant has decided to sift through them
The experience of businessman Vilas Madigeri and his corporator wife Varsha Madigeri after seeking information on the links of Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation’s health department with pharmaceutical dealers may deter public from filing applications under the Right to Information (RTI) Act without a second thought, as both were given voluminous data and charged Rs 1.12 lakh.
Now, when the shocked Madigeri has decided to scrutinise the 56,000-page data, which is kept in Yeshwantrao Chavan Memorial Hospital, to find out what is important and also to bring down the cost, PCMC’s health department is claiming that it has charged only for the copy of documents sought by Madigeri and that too at the rate of Rs 2 which is the prescribed cost for a copy of document.
Two months back, on September 3, Madigeri had filed an RTI application with PCMC’s health department to obtain a comprehensive information about pharmaceutical dealers supplying medicine to the health department for the last 10 years.
The information he sought included, apart from the names of these dealers, their contact details and details about the health department tenders they had bid, data on batch numbers, manufacturing dates and expiry dates of medicines purchased by the department. The total number of RTI questions raised by Madigeri was 19.
Although Madigeri received the information promptly, within 20 days, what upset him was the amount charged Rs 1.12 lakh, and the volume of documents supplied to him 56,000 pages! Dr Nagkumar Kunachgi, the head of PCMC’s health department, spoke on the whopping amount involved and the reluctance of the applicant to accept the documents meant for him.
“Vilas Madigeri had filed an RTI to the Health Department in which he sought various information which we kept ready for him within 20 days. The charge for photocopying each document is Rs 2 as per the RTI Act and for 56,000 pages the amount came upto Rs 1.12 lakh. It has been more than a month now, yet Madigeri has not collected them,” said Kunachgi.
On the efforts to contact Madigeri, whose documents are now a headache for the health officials, the civic health chief said, “We have notified him again regarding the documents. The documents have piled up in one of the rooms of Yeshwantrao Chavan Memorial Hospital.”
Dr Nagkumar continued, “Madigeri had given almost 500 applications earlier to the Health Department. He had appealed earlier as information was not provided in time. However, this time we made it a point to give information within the timeframe.
Almost 10 officials were working to collect all the documents as they had asked for the last 10 years data, but we completed the work in 20 days. We have no clue why details of 10 years has been sort by Madigeri but providing information is our duty and so we did it.”
Suhas Kakade, the information officer of YCMH, said on Sunday, “We have sent him another letter requesting him to collect the documents. He is yet to turn up, although it has been more than a month since the documents were kept ready.”
Madigeri speaks
Vilas Madigeri, who is a resident of Indrayani Nagar said, “My wife Varsha Madigeri, who is a corporator of PCMC, and I had filed applications for the information. The only difference is that my wife had asked for information on her personal letterhead and I had asked information under the RTI Act.
If my wife did not ask RTI information, then why she should pay the amount? When the information was ready we received letters from the PCMC demanding an amount of Rs 24,516 and later we received another letter asking to pay Rs 1,12,230. This perplexed me.”
He further added, “I am going to collect the documents as they are important and I had asked for them, but I will be inspecting them. I shall photocopy only those documents which I feel are important. There is nothing written in law that I will have to accept all the documents, so I shall chose only the important ones.
The health department said that they had to work for 20 days for the collection of documents, but if the office was computerised then they would not have faced this difficulty.”
On why he had asked the personal details of contractors such as their addresses, including that of email and phone numbers, among other matters, he said, “I had a doubt that there are some lapses in the working of the department and so I asked information about the tenders and the contractors. I wanted to know the details of the medicines as well, which were supplied in the past 10 years.”
Expertspeak
When Pune Mirror got in touch with Deputy Secretary of State Information Commission Raviraj Phalle to know what action could be taken if an applicant fails to accept the documents he said, “Before giving an RTI application, the applicant should know that what documents he wishes to have.
The applicant should ask only those information which he feels is relevant, so that such enormous amounts can be avoided. Before photocopying the documents, the applicant should inspect and prioritise the documents that he wishes to photocopy. It is not mandatory that he should collect all the documents.
Only those documents he feels are important should be photocopied. The current standard rate for the photocopy is Rs 2 for each RTI document.”
Phalle further added, “If the organisation takes the photocopies of the RTI documents and the applicant fails to collect them, then no action can be taken against the applicant as the law is for the people.”
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