NDTV: New Delhi: Thursday,
June 13, 2013.
The Prime
Minister's Office (PMO) has cited confidentiality and refused to answer a Right
to Information application related to the controversial land deals of
businessman Robert Vadra. Mr Vadra is the son-in-law of Congress president
Sonia Gandhi, often described as the most powerful person in the country.
Last year,
Nutan Thakur had filed a Public Interest Litigation or PIL in Uttar Pradesh
asking that Dr Manmohan Singh's office order an investigation into whether Mr
Vadra was given sweetheart land deals by real estate major DLF in the state of
Haryana, where the Congress is in power.
Ms Thakur's
appeal was rejected by an Allahabad court after the Prime Minister's Office
(PMO) said it could not order a probe in business dealings between two private
entities. The PMO's response was listed in an affidavit to court.
The court
observed that her petition was based solely on media reports and was not backed
by direct evidence.
Ms Thakur
then filed a Right to Information application, asking for details of documents
and notings that were used to prepare the PMO's affidavit. She also asked for
details of what action did the PMO take - whether it involved other ministries,
for example - after she filed her petition in court seeking an investigation
against Mr Vadra.
In its
response to her, the PMO has said that while the Right to Information Act aims
at creating transparency to contain corruption and increase accountability, it
also seeks to "ensure that revelation of information, in actual practice,
does not harm or adversely affect other important public interests which
include efficient functioning of the governments, optimum use of limited fiscal
resources, and preservation of confidentiality of sensitive information."
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