Indian Express: Thiruvananthapuram: Saturday, March 07,
2015.
A social
activist has cried foul over the State Information Commission’s (SIC) response
to his query under the RTI Act which sought information regarding the
possibility of receiving documents related to junkets carried out by government
servants.
Last month,
social activist Sabu Stephen from the capital had sought information on whether
passports of government servants are available for public scrutiny. In case of
their availability, he had also demanded furnishing of government orders,
circulars, laws, rules and court orders and directions which facilitated such
rights to the populace.
However, the
SIC, which according to the Act, should have primarily rejected the query in
case the information sought for is exempted from disclosure, received it, only
to reject it later after an inordinate delay of more than one month.
“The
information which is sought does not come under the ambit of the Commission as
it is not available,’’ said State Chief Information Commissioner Siby Mathews.
However, according to the Act, the ‘‘State Information Officer may seek the
assistance of any other officer it considers necessary for the proper discharge
of his or her duty.’’ Contradicting this, Siby Mathews said that it does not
come under the functioning of the Commission to direct a query to the
department or official concerned. “We are not responsible for directing the
query to the department concerned and the appellant should have approached the
General Administration Department of the state government for the information,”
he said. The reply to Sabu from Additional Chief Secretary Sadashiv Bhatt did
neither carry the details of the appellate authority nor the time duration for
filing an appeal.
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