Hindustan
Times: Lucknow: Tuesday, October 16, 2012.
If your query
under the Right to Information (RTI) has still not been answered, there is very
little chance it will ever be. This is because the clerical staff at the UP
State Information Commission (UPSIC) have discovered their own way of ensuring
the prompt disposal of such applications - they simply burn or dump them in the
river!
And no one
would ever be any wiser simply because the commission does not keep a record of
the notices it sends to the departments from whom the information has been
sought. HT tried to glean information on the issue. Here are the facts, as
revealed by sources in the commission:
Under lock
and key;
The room that
served as a centralised dispatch system for delivering the notices/orders
passed by the UPSIC was locked for over a month. Officially, the reason given
is that the dispatch system has been decentralised. Insiders admit it's a
damagecontrol move after the bosses in the commission came to know about the
staff's misdeed. Instead of being assigned to just two peons, the dispatch work
has now been distributed among the staff of the respective courts. The two
suspect dispatchers have been shifted to other sections of the commission. The
room is being used for other official work now.
Snail mail;
The SIC
receives nearly 450 applications on a given day. Nearly 330 notices are served
per day from the commission's 11 courts. With eight vacancies, the SIC is not
in full-steam at present. Most of the notices are dispatched through general
post while those in which fines are imposed on officials are sent through
registered post.
The
response;
The SIC
officials said since past three months they were uploading all notices that
were being sent out on the commission's website. A check by HT revealed only
259 notices had been uploaded so far, all issued in recent months. Not a very
impressive track record. But commission officials said this was the best they
could do with just three out of the 11 information commissioners at the helm.
Shift from
past practice;
Advocate BK
Singh, who has filed 20 queries, says months have passed, but he is yet to receive
any official intimation or information on any of his applications.
"Before
the present chief information commissioner took over, the commission used to
send all notices through registered/speed post," he said. Why have they
done away with the system? he asks. He levels a more serious charge, saying the
commission has adopted a pro-government stance. "The SIC is defunct for
petitioners. Rather than ensuring that people get the information they have
sought, the commission seems more inclined to dismissing their
applications," he says.
The
commission's case;
"We were
told by some staff members that the notices were not being delivered to the
parties concerned. But that was three months ago. The notices are now being
dispatched by the court staff only," said an official who did not want to
be named.
PK Agarwal, the UPSIC secretary, dismissed the
charge, saying all the notices were now being posted on the commission's
website and he was maintaining a record of all the official correspondence.
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