DNA: Mumbai: Tuesday, 05 August 2014.
The state
information commission has declared Mahanand Dairy, a venture of Maharashtra
Rajya Sahakari Dudh Mahasangh, Maryadit (MRSDMM), a public authority. State
information commissioner (Brihanmumbai bench) Ajit Kumar Jain passed the order
on July 31 after several applications filed by Shree Naik, a distributor of
Mahanand Dairy.
The dairy is
one of the prime milk suppliers to Mumbai and other cities Pune and
Aurangabad. MRSDMM is an apex federation of district- and taluka-level milk
unions that are established to implement, among other needs, the milk supply of
state at a reasonable rate.
Naik had
sought information about various aspects of the dairy's functioning. These
included the money spent by it for advertisement schemes and benefits received
from them, procurement of cattle feed, expenses on milk powder, details of
facilities and expenses borne by the dairy for the officials and board members,
procedure to purchase the plastic packets in which the milk is packaged, units
running in losses, agencies appointed, and details of loss-making projects in
and outside the state, among others. The applicant had also sought details on
officials against whom criminal charges were framed by state authorities.
"The
dairy has suffered losses of Rs40 crore recently. A large amount of money seems
to have been pocketed by showing that cars are given to chief minister and
deputy chief minister, among other such reasons. They were giving information
until recently but stopped in 2010 as corruption started being unearthed
through RTI," said Naik.
The order
comes after an earlier order by state chief information commissioner Ratnakar
Gaikwad. Gaikwad's order was challenged in the Bombay high court and referred
for re-hearing to the commission as it had not taken into account some of the
other appeals.
Hearing of
the cases that went on for over two months had officials from the dairy
department and Mahanand Dairy-MRSDMM, among others, present. Naik said Mahanand
dairy-MRSDMM had government officials holding posts of managing director and
finance in-charge, it was receiving financial funding from the government,
among others.
Arguing,
dairy department and MRSDMM said though they had government officers, they did
not have voting powers, some of the land was purchased by the dairy and they
were paying loans on their own.
Information
commissioner, citing various case laws and high court judgment, said Mahanand
Dairy-MRSDMM comes under RTI. It ordered appointment of public information
officer and first appellate authority in a month's time and supplying all
information to the applicant in two months.
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