The Times of India:Chandigarh:Thursday, March 01, 2012.
Punjab and Haryana high court has made it clear that excuses like "shortage of staff", "extra work" cannot be accepted as grounds for declining information under RTI Act.
While pronouncing the order, Justice Augustine George Masih observed, "If such excuses are accepted, the RTI Act would become redundant and ineffective, and would frustrate the objective for which it has been enacted. Such internal administrative reasons cannot be treated as a defense for not supplying information."
The ruling has come in the wake of a writ petition filed against an order passed by the state information commission (SIC), Punjab, on June 14, 2010. SIC had imposed a penalty of Rs 25,000 against the state public information officer of Ludhiana Improvement Trust, Lal Singh Tiwana, for a delay of more than five months in supplying information to RTI applicant Gurwinderjeet Singh from Ludhiana.
Justice Masih rejected all reasons put forth by Tiwana and concurred with those given by SIC for imposing a penalty on the information officer for delay in information to the complainant.
In his petition filed against the SIC orders, Tiwana had stated that Ludhiana Improvement Trust was functioning with only 40% of sanctioned staff strength and there was a heavy rush of public for registration of plots on the basis of original price under a scheme which was expiring. He had argued that additional work of census was being done by the staff, which resulted into delay in supplying information to the complainant.
Justice Masih, however, accepted the petitioner's contention, that although the RTI application was received in January 2010, the petitioner-information officer had joined the trust on transfer on May 11, 2010, and therefore, was not responsible for the delay on the part of his predecessor. Accordingly, Justice Masih held that the petitioner-information officer has to be imposed a penalty at the rate of Rs 250 per day for a period of 75 days, amounting to Rs 18,750.
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