Times of India: Lucknow: Tuesday,
April 16, 2013.
Lucknow
Municipal Corporation, which receives probably the largest number of RTI
queries on a daily basis, fails to answer them on time. Sources say the
corporation officials have been penalised by the information commission many
times for not having appeared on the stipulated date and time of the hearing.
As a result
of the dismissive approach of Nagar Nigam babus towards RTI, there has been an
increase in the number of applications piling in the information office for not
getting factual and timely response from various departments of LMC.
In fact,
instead of attending hearings, officials in various departments send their
subordinates and even peons to the commission. Reportedly, municipal
commissioner RK Singh has taken a serious cognizance of the matter when the
complaints kept pouring in over last few days. Singh has instructed officials
to respond to the queries on a priority basis as the public information officer
(PIO) of LMC has been penalised nine times recently.
He also said
that officials are not appearing personally and are dependant on clerks and
peons to do the needful as a result of which penalty of Rs 25,000 is being
imposed on LMC PIO every time. Singh has also ordered that the penalty would be
deducted from the staff's salary responsible for the delay. On an average, 30
RTIs are being received daily by the LMC.
Meanwhile,
LMC's senior officials have appealed for more time from the information office
for responding to the pending cases. An official said, "Many times, we are
not aware of the hearing dates. We get to know about these dates only through
our clerical staff who visit the state information commission office regularly.
In such a scenario, there are chances of hearings being missed by us."
Officials
even defended themselves saying that in most cases, RTI applications are being
sent on the same day of receiving to the zonal office but they get lost or
stuck and even remain unattended at various levels of officials working in
zonal offices. In LMC, most complaints have come for seeking information in the
rent department.
Singh said
departmental action would be taken against any official who is found guilty and
has been delaying response to the RTI query which includes suspension, penalty
etc. "It is a citizen's right to access information and any delay in this
matter would not be tolerated. We have a dedicated wing in every department to
provide information on a daily basis, if still the officials fail to respond
they should face serious action against them," he added.
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