The
Asian Age: New Delhi: Friday, 12 September 2014.
Flouting the
Right to Information rules, the public works department (PWD) recently demanded
Rs 50 per page for the reply to an RTI query. The applicant, who has been
allegedly threatened by the contractor for filing the RTI application, has
lodged a complaint with the police commissioner and the Central Information
Commission.
The RTI Act,
2005, states that the government authorities can charge only Rs 2 per page for
each A3 or A4 size page. RTI activist Manish Bhatnagar, a resident of Rohini,
had sought information from the PWD about the construction of a science
laboratory and eight rooms in a Delhi government-run school in South Delhi’s
Ambedkar Nagar area about three months ago.
After waiting
for about a month for the PWD reply, the RTI activists was sent a letter at his
residential address by the PWD which demanded Rs 22,600 for printing of a 450-page
report. The letter, written in Hindi, said: “The information you have sought is
very vast and we have verified some 452 pages so far to send you. We request
you to kindly deposit Rs 22,600 at the rate of Rs 50 per page, through pay
order or demand draft in favour of ‘Executive Engineer, CBMD M-42, New Delhi’
at the earliest...” Before receiving the PWD letter, a person posing as police
employee had allegedly called Manish and threatened him for stealing
confidential documents.
The RTI
activist has reportedly filed his complaint through an e-mail with the police
commissioner. He has filed a complaint with a senior PWD engineer as well.
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