TOI: Pankul Sharma: Meerut: Wednesday, August 26, 2015.
State Information Commissioner (SIC) Hafij Usman has imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 each on 12 information officers and two principals in Muzaffarnagar for failing to provide the required information sought under the RTI Act. Among the officers who have been fined is a city magistrate who has been penalized for the second time.
According to administrative sources of Muzaffarnagar, those fined include a city magistrate, deputy director (agriculture), superintendent engineer (Gramin Vidyut Vitran Khand Rambagh), executive engineer of Jal Nigam, deputy commissioner (Vanijya Kar), district election officer, principal of SD College, principal of BIT, village development officers of Khatauli, Luharikhurd, Akbargarh and Muthara, executive engineer of power distribution (Nai Mandi) and executive officer of municipality of Muzaffarnagar. The SIC also instructed the administration to take departmental action against the 12 officers who didn't provide the information sought under the RTI Act in time. .
An RTI activist, Naresh Agrawal, said, "It has been a regular practice by all the information officers, irrespective of department, of making a mockery of the RTI Act. I have made hundreds of queries but none of them is given within a period of one month, the time limit mentioned under the RTI Act. It's a habit of these officials to delay answering an RTI application to force the applicant move to the commission. As the commissioner sits in Lucknow, barring a few, none follows the application and goes before the commission.
"Besides recovering the penalty from the information officer, the departmental head (appellate authority) must also be penalized. Once their accountability is fixed, they will be pressuring the information officer for giving the information sought accordingly and in time," Agrawal added.
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