Himachal CIC serves notices on four DCs

Hindustan Times: Bilaspur: Tuesday, 12 August 2014.

Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) Bhim Sain has issued show-cause notices along with a warning of penal action under the Right to Information (RTI) Act to four deputy commissioners (DCs) in Himachal Pradesh, who failed to provide information about the existing status of government land as well as the number of encroachments cases in Himachal Pradesh in response to an RTI application.

The CIC has served show-cause notice to DCs of Shimla, Mandi, Hamirpur and Kullu and given them a week’s time to come up with the status of encroachments on government land in their respected districts.

It has been observed that the DCs have not supplied information as per the direction of the first appellate authority-cum-principal secretary-cum-financial commissioner (revenue) to the state government, observed the CIC in his interim order of August 7.  The CIC served notices to the DCs in response to RTI activist Dev Ashish Bhattacharya’s appeal who had sought the correct record of government land and status of encroachment on government land.

The principal information officer (PIO) has submitted that his predecessor in compliance to an order dated July 7, 2013 passed by the first appellate authority, had issued directions to all DCs on January 23, 2014 to collect, collate and complete tehsil/sub-tehsil wise information regarding encroachment cases on government land. The matter was also reiterated in subsequent reminder.

It is also stated in the order that the information has so far been received from all other districts except Shimla, Mandi, Hamirpur and Kullu.