Times of India: Nagpur: Saturday,
March 16, 2013.
The State
Information Commission (SIC) bench in Nagpur seems to be everything to blunt
the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005, a legislation that has empowered
common people against bureaucrats.
Out of 1,849
second appeals and 485 complaints it received in six months from June to
December last year, it acted only on three levying a fine of just Rs18,000 in
all. These figures were obtained by budding lawyer Ankita Shah through an RTI
query. SIC had recommend 'disciplinary action' only in 41 cases out of total.
Now, the next step for the aggrieved applicants is to knock high court's doors.
Worst, the SIC
office gave wrong information about its own function initially. In its earlier
reply to Shah's query, it had informed it had levied a fine only in one case
and not even issued a show cause notices in other cases. However, after TOI
called SIC commissioner Bhaskar Patil, who also has additional charge of
Amravati division, the office corrected the reply. Although Patil, a former
government pleader at Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court, had an impressive
stint as information commissioner in Amravati division having disposed of 263
cases in 2011, the highest in state, in Nagpur, the situation is completely
opposite.
Patil
admitted his office had made an error while supplying information to Shah
earlier. He also stated that though the speed of taking action against those
not providing information under RTI was slow, his office was making efforts to
replicate Amravati model and speed up disposal of cases.
Public
Information Officer at SIC AR Kardar further informed that out of 1,849 second
appeals and 485 complaints, they had held hearings on 1,596 and 17
respectively. After this, they issued show case notices to 38 parties for
non-compliance and on six complainants. The three appellate officers who failed
to provide information to the applicants and were penalized include RR Raut
from Lakhandur in Bhandara, PT Shende and KY Dahat from Gondia and Monali
Landge from Sakoli again in Bhandara. Raut who is PRO and secretary of Soni
Indora Gram Panchayat was fined of Rs5,000, typist Shende and naib tehsildar
Dahat were fined Rs10,000 while PRO and Gram Sevak Landge was fined Rs3,000.
Shah,
however, lamented that SIC had powers to levy a maximum of Rs25,000 fine for
non-compliance by the first appellate authorities, but was not doing so and
also not disposing of complaints quickly resulting in pile up. Patil denied the
allegation and stated that second appeals came to them only after office
concerned failed to provide information within a month and even first appellate
authority failed to do so. "The process is a bit lengthy as we have to
give hearing to both sides," he said.
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