Kashmir
Images: Srinagar: Friday, 04 September 2015.
A lawyer who
had filed an application under Right to Information (RTI) Act with Forest
department has got an empty envelope in reply.
Advocate
Hakeem Shabir Malik, who had filed an RTI application in the Forest department,
Tangmarg, got an empty envelope as a reply to his queries.
Malik, also
from Tangmarg, said he had filed two RTI applications but both were ignored by
the Forest department, following which he filed an appeal with the appellant
authority Chief Conservator of Forests. However, to his astonishment, what
he got as reply is an empty envelope.
“After filing two applications, when I did not
get any reply from the department, I filed an appeal in office of the Chief
Conservator of Forests. Thereafter, a few days I got a duly acknowledged
envelope from the department. I was
about to open it when while seeing through it I found the envelope was empty,”
Malik said.
While showing
the empty envelope to this reporter, which of course he has not opened yet,
Malik said he won’t open it for the sealed envelope is the only proof he has to
prove the Forest department’s “deceit”.
“I did not
open the envelope, because if I open it, I know that I will have no proof that
the envelope was empty,” Malik said, adding that the Forest department has been
playing tricks to avoid giving him information he has sought.
He said in
his queries, he had sought details about the working of the Forest department
in Tangmarg, the information-related to the timber allotments, and the money
utilized.
“I had not
asked for any information that is prohibited. It was the information that the
department could have provided without any problems. Now see if they can’t
provide such mundane information, how could we expect them to be transparent
when it comes to other very serious information,” Malik said.
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