Deccan
Herald: New Delhi: Monday, 15 December 2014.
Police now
discard frivolous pleas at initial stages itself.
Lessons in
handling Right to Information applications are doing good to Delhi policemen
who are discarding frivolous pleas at initial stages itself with the help of a
Delhi government consultant.
“Many of the
officials do not know that they can refuse to entertain a plea which uses more
than 500 words,” said S C Agrawal, the RTI consultant who conducts lectures for
officers and low-rung cops.
Now, police
officials have started counting wordage of the RTI pleas they get before
getting down to answering them, he said.
“Sub-inspectors
and SHOs keep calling me on my phone for instant advice on how to go about
dealing with applications,” he said.
Agrawal, a
qualified mechanical engineer, said from his interaction with police officers
he came to know that RTI was being used mostly in dowry harassment or
maintenance cases between estranged couples.
“I have been
telling police public information officers that they need not pass all
information to the RTI applicants if it could harm the privacy of the ‘third
party’,” he said.
“My stress
has been on educating policemen to invoke Section 11 of the RTI Act and seek
the consent of the person about whom the RTI applicant has sought information.
The affected party’s approval is needed to give out personal details,” he said.
Third
party:
Section 11
for inviting comments of the ‘third party’ must be invoked within five days of
receipt of Right to Information petition, and not in 30 days of receipt of RTI
petition, as has been usually observed, he said.
Late transfer
of a plea or seeking comments from the ‘third party’ can attract penalty-proceedings
under Section 20 of RTI Act, he said.
Agrawal, 64,
who also holds the Guinness World Record for most number of published letters
to the editor in newspapers, said while interacting with policemen he also
found a tendency to deny information to RTI applicants in cases under
investigation.
“Due to lack
of knowledge of the transparency law, policemen are denying information to even
genuine applicants.”
“Information
can be withheld if its sharing impedes investigation but the policemen tend to
block details even if the information is harmless and unlikely to influence the
probe,” he said.
He is also
working on police department’s public information officers to avoid Right to
Information communication that do not mention the dates of receipt of Right to
Information petition.
“Non-providing
of date of receipt of RTI petition by the responding officer also results in
filing of petitions in the Information Commission for alleged delay, while it
may not be the case, thereby harming man-hours and money spent by all concerned
including of Information Commissions, public-authorities and petitioners,” he
said.
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