Times of India: Hyderabad: Saturday, October 11, 2014.
A workshop
held on the occasion of the ninth anniversary of the Right to Information Act
saw information commissioners assail IAS and IPS officers for what they called
blatant disrespect and disregard for the constitutional duties being performed
by the information commission.
"If they
(the officers of the governments of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana) had any
respect for the RTI Act, this hall would have been full. The fact is that the
majority of the departments did not even send their public information officers
(PIO) to the workshop," said information commissioner P Vijay Babu, who
then proceeded to launch a broadside against government officials.
Vijay Babu
alleged that some officers have not shed their colonial culture of maintaining
secrecy even in today's era of transparency. "LV Subramanyam, a senior
bureaucrat who happened to serve as executive officer of Tirumala Tirupati
Devasthanams (TTD), responded to an RTI query by stating that TTD does not come
under the purview of the RTI Act. Is this the way they treat a constitutional
body? Likewise, Navin Mittal, another IAS officer, refused to probe a certain
matter raised by us on the grounds that he was busy with the elections. This,
even after the election commission had made it clear that RTI queries need to
be responded to even during electioneering," he said.
Information
commissioner Varre Venkateswarlu referred to an IAS officer without naming him
and said that the person in question had become angry for having been served a
notice by a 'former journalist' who now happens to be an information
commissioner. "Whatever we were in the past, we represent a constitutional
body now. How can anyone ignore this fact?" he lamented.
M Ratan,
another information commissioner who happened to be a former IPS officer,
backed his colleagues and said that the endowments department has taken to many
measures, including the courts, to deny information.
Information
commissioner Lam Thantiya Kumari rued that there is no protection for RTI
activists. "There may be one or two incidents of misusing the Act, but
police officials are unfairly picking on the activists," she said and
recalled an instance in Srikakulam where a police officer made life miserable
for an activist for having filed a query under the RTI Act.
Another
information commissioner, S Imtiyaz Ahmed, said that collectors do not provide
information as sought by them and do not honour the penalties imposed
thereafter. Information commissioner M Vijaya Nirmala sought protection for
them on the grounds that they are repeatedly threatened by those in the
government.
QUOTE
LV
Subramanyam, a senior bureaucrat who happened to serve as executive officer of
TTD, responded to an RTI query by stating that TTD does not come under the
purview of the RTI Act. Is this the way they treat a constitutional body? - P
Vijay Babu, information commissioner.
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