India Today: New Delhi: Thursday,
June 20, 2013.
Autonomy can
mean different things to the UPA government - very rarely approaching anything
close to the actual definition of the word.
But it is
different with Chief Information Commissioner Satyananda Mishra, a man who is
fighting the system from within the system.
Last week,
the 1973-batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the Madhya
Pradesh cadre rocked the establishment when a CIC bench chaired by him passed
an order to bring all major political parties under the Right to Information
(RTI) Act - a decision that could have major ramifications for the functioning
of Indian politics.
The decision
ended up drawing the ire of leaders from across the political spectrum, but
then Mishra has never been known to shy away from stepping on a few toes.
'Unafraid':
"He has
always been very bold. He is never afraid to make a decision," said
Subhash Chandra Agrawal, a dedicated RTI activist. "I would call him the
ideal CIC, both in terms of administrative capacity and quasi-judicial
skill."
A graduate of
Utkal University, with an M. Phil in Public Administration from Panjab
University and an MSc in Policy Planning from the London School of Economics,
Mishra's decisions have always been aimed at making the system more accountable
- be it directing the RBI to come clear on its policy on 'suspense accounts' in
2009, to the one about political parties.
But while he
is a celebrated personality today, back in 2010, his election as CIC was widely
opposed by activists on the ground that a bureaucrat who had spent much of his
career submitting to the demands of the government could not be trusted with a
role that requires a substantial amount of independence.
Agrawal,
however, says the stand was misconceived. "It is true that while they are
in the bureaucracy, they have to be in their limits," he said. "But,
as we have seen in Satyananda Mishra's case, his long career in the government
has given him the chance to observe loopholes and see through the arguments of
some of the Central Public Information Officers."
No
conflict:
In fact,
Mishra had encountered, and overcome, the "conflict-of-interest"
during his tenure as information commissioner, when he was assigned an RTI
application seeking file noting.
The
Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), where he had served as secretary,
was vehemently opposed to the demand. But Mishra ruled that file noting does
come under the RTI Act, and even called for ministries and departments to put
them online. It was only a matter of time before the DoPT gave in.
In fact,
making information freely available through the Internet has been his pet
cause. While ruling on several RTIs, for example those pertaining to trips
taken by public officeholders, Mishra has not only called for information to be
handed out to petitioners, but also for it to be uploaded online with regular
updates.
Revolutionary:
Additionally,
activists say, the CIC's functioning has improved under his administration.
Where the
registry might earlier have taken weeks to accept a petition and assign it a
date, the CIC now does it within 72 hours. He has also moved to make the CIC a
paperless institution, introducing the use of a dictaphone to keep things
transparent.
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