No right to info in P’kula! : People fail to get replies under RTI Act; Chief Secy’s orders go unheeded

Chandigarh Tribune: Chandigarh: Thursday, 05 February 2015.

It seems the Panchkula Administration does not believe in empowering its citizens with the right to information, defeating the very purpose of implementing the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005.

Going by the unanswered RTI applications piled up in different government offices, it can be safely assumed that the officials concerned in different departments are “concealing” information from those seeking it for periods ranging up to five months.

Rakesh Aggarwal, a resident of Sector 12, who filed seven RTI applications in various departments in the last week of November last year, is yet to get a reply.

This despite the fact that the Haryana Chief Secretary has issued strict directions to ensure the implementation of Act. However, officials of the departments don’t care two hoots for these directions. “On November 25, I filed an RTI plea in the MC asking it how many safai karamcharis were there and of them how many were working in houses of bureaucrats. I had also sought information about their salaries and the attendance system, but so far I haven’t got any reply,” said Aggarwal.

Similarly, on November 28, another RTI plea was filed in the MC to know the ownership of land where encroachments by occupants of corner houses had come to light, but no reply was received.

A resident, Jaspal Singh, has lodged a complaint at the CM window about information not being provided under the RTI Act.

The Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) did not reply to an RTI plea for a long time, and when the reply was received, it said it did not have the documents. An RTI plea filed by a resident of Sector 12 to know why work had not started on a vacant plot where a dispensary was to come up for the past 15 years elicited a reply that the matter was very old, and no documents regarding it were available. Upender Pathak, a resident of Sector 24 who filed an RTI plea in HUDA regarding the enhancement fee issue in Sectors 25 to 28, claimed that he got incomplete information.

The Uttar Haryana Bijli Vidyut Nigam (UHBVN) is not far behind. An RTI plea filed by a resident, who did not want to be quoted, regarding revenue collection from domestic users has not elicited a reply for over two months. The resident wanted to know the basis of the increase in the prices of electricity.