Deccan Herald: New Delhi: Thursday, September 11, 2014.
Activist says
he got threatening calls from some 'police official'.
The Public
Works Department of the city government has sought a seemingly outlandish sum
of Rs 22,600 for providing an activist with the information he has sought from
it.
Manish
Bhatnagar, RTI (Right to Information)
activist from Rohini, had sought information from the PWD about construction of
science lab and eight rooms in a Delhi government-run school in Ambedkar Nagar
three months ago.
“I got to
know that the principal of the school had complained against the PWD contractor
for discrepancies in the building. I filed an RTI and demanded every minute
detail of construction of the building,” Manish told Deccan Herald.
The activist
waited for more than a month for a reply from the PWD. On July 27, the department sent him letter
demanding Rs 22,600, apparently for printing or photocopying a 452-page report.
“The
information you have sought is very vast and we have verified some 452 pages so
far to send them to you. We request you to kindly deposit Rs 22,600 at the rate
of Rs 50 per page, through pay order or demand draft to ‘In Favour of Executive
Engineer, CBMD M-422, New Delhi’ at the earliest,” the department said in the
letter in Hindi, a copy of which is with Deccan Herald.
On July 2,
before the letter from the PWD, a person posing as some police personnel
allegedly called Manish and threatened to teach him a lesson if he went ahead
with the RTI query against the contractor.
Manish
alleged that the accused is the same contractor against whom he had filed the
RTI query.
“The person
claimed that he is a policeman and accused me of the hilarious charge of stealing
confidential documents and attaching it with the RTI. I tried to call police,
but twice no one picked up at the emergency number. Then I filed a written
complaint through email to the Police Commissioner and gave details about the
incident,” Manish said.
Manish has
filed a complaint with the first appellate authority Superintending Engineer,
PWD, Sukhdev Vihar and expressed his dissatisfaction with the department’s
letter.
“If the
department does not reply and police do not take action against the culprits, I
will file a case in court. I have also filed a separate complaint against the
PWD with the Central Information Commission for overcharging,” he said.
According to
the rules of the RTI Act, 2005, the authorities can only charge Rs 2 per page
for printing or photocopy of each A3 or A4 size paper.
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