Pay Rs 25k to woman employee, CIC tells LIC.

Syed Khalique Ahmed: The Indian Express; Tue Mar 15 2011,

Ahmedabad : Woman was ‘harrassed’, her RTI queries were stonewalled;

The Central Information Commission in New Delhi has asked Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of India to pay a compensation of Rs 25,000 to a woman LIC official in connection with a sexual harassment case. It has also asked LIC to arrange a proper training programme in RTI provisions for its officials.

Deepak Sandhu, Information Commissioner, CIC, said that LIC officials handling RTI matters were not adequately aware of Act.

According to the details, Jayshree Ravindra Parmar, an assistant administrative officer at the LIC office in Naranpura in Ahmedabad, had spoken to LIC branch manager C B Samparia in November 2009 in connection with a policy of IPS officer Keshav Kumar, at present posted in New Delhi.

She alleged that during the talks, Samparia made some indecent proposals. Later, Samparia apologised to Jayshree’s husband but the latter taped the conversation. Parmar then filed a complaint and LIC authorities instituted two probes: one by a Preliminary Inquiry Committee and another by the Women Harassment Committee. Both committees submitted their reports by March 2010 and Samparia was subsequently transferred.

But Jayshree demanded contents of the reports as she felt that the probe officials had protected Samparia.

Jayshree filed an RTI appeal after she was denied the report. She said she wanted to take legal action against the accused official and the seniors who wanted to protect the guilty official. After a second denial, she moved the CIC in May 2010.

She stated that the denial had caused her mental agony and kept her away from exercising her fundamental rights of taking legal recourse.

Finally she was provided with the report on January 29, 2011, almost 10 months after her first RTI appeal, and it was incomplete and several parts had been deleted.

After hearing both sides, the commission observed that there was an intentional effort to hold back and deny information to the appellant to prevent her from taking recourse to other optional channels. CIC ordered LIC to provide complete information of the inquiry report to the appellant.