Indian Express; Rajni Shaleen Chopra; Thursday, August 4, 2011.
Chandigarh : The powerful Right to Information Act has been empowered more. Consumer courts in the region are now taking up cases filed by people who have been denied information under the RTI Act.
In the latest instance, the Chandigarh Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum has issued notice to the Chief Information Commissioner Punjab and the Public Information Officer (PIO) of Punjab following a complaint submitted by Sanjay Kumar Mishra, an RTI activist. In his complaint filed in the Forum, Mishra stated that the Punjab Information Commission had been rejecting review petitions of the general public, stating ‘No provision of review’.
As per the RTI Act, the judgement of the Information Commission cannot be reviewed by any other authority. In case the appellant or the complainant is not satisfied with the order, he has to move a writ petition in the high court for the purpose.
Mishra stated that his review request, submitted to the Commission in July 2010, had been rejected on the same ground. But in another case, the Information Commission accepted a review request received from the PIO of the office of Director Local Government , Punjab.
Mishra said that in this particular case, the Chief Information Commissioner stated that the previous order would be kept in abeyance till the disposal of the review petition. Following this, Mishra filed an RTI to the Public Information Officer of the Punjab Information Commission. He stated that he should be given a certified copy of the relevant rule/ section under which the ‘Request for Review’ received from the PIO of Director Local Government Punjab had been accepted.
Mishra further demanded certified copies of the reasons for which his review request had been rejected. Refusing his request, he said, violated his ‘right to equality’ guaranteed by the Constitution. He stated in his complaint that the PIO and also the First Appellate Authority of the Commission did not provide him a copy of any provision of law regarding why his request was rejected.
“I wrote to the Information Commission about it, and the case came up for hearing on April 6 this year. After the hearing, the Information Commissioner stated in the order that there are four grounds on the basis of which a case can be re-opened, but these grounds are not applicable to all requesters. My case was dismissed without giving me a certified copy of the concerned rules,” he said.
Aggrieved, Mishra filed a case in the Chandigarh Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum. What has made the consumer courts take a clear stand on the issue is the judgment of the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission in a revision petition.
The National Consumer Commission had ruled in May 2009 that applicants who seek information under the RTI Act are ‘consumers’, and non-submission of information by a public authority amounted to deficiency in service under the Consumer Protection Act.
In June this year, the Faridkot Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum had ordered the District Transport Department to pay Rs 10,000 as compensation to a local resident for delay in providing information under the RTI Act. And in April last year, the Karnal Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum had issued a notice to the State Principal Information Officer (SPIO) of the Haryana Staff Selection Commission under the RTI Act.
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