DNA: Ahmedabad: Friday, April 08,
2016.
A bank
officer was terminated from his job for seeking information under the Right to
Information Act (RTI) about a voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) that the bank
was pushing their employees to sign for, in Dhrangadhra.
Narendra
Agrawal has been working at the Dhrangadhra People’s Co-operation Bank since
May 1986 when he began as a clerk and was then promoted to officer in 1992. The
bank issued a circular on January 21, 2015, informing employees that five of
them would be terminated under the VRS. It also said that in case enough
employees do not opt for VRS, bank would initiate Compulsory Retirement Scheme
(CRS).
Alarmed by
this, Agrawal asked the district registrar on February 3, 2015, under the Right
to Information (RTI) Act if the bank had taken permission to initiate VRS.
Agrawal also did not sign the circular so the bank first gave him a memorandum
asking him why action should not be taken against him.
Agrawal
said, “The first memo against me was issued by the bank on August 1, 2015, and
I was asked to reply within a week. The bank letter states that since I had
asked for information from the district registrar about the confidential
details of the bank, it has decided to issue me a memo asking me why
disciplinary action should not be initiated against me. I replied within a week
but the bank issued another memo maintaining that they were not satisfied with
my first reply.”
Agrawal
again replied but was asked to meet the managing director of the bank and on
August 22, 2015, he was suspended. Finally on January 22, 2016, the bank issued
a letter to Agrawal stating, ‘You have asked for confidential matter about the
bank and management. It has proved your bona fide intention in connection with
the reference to the RTI to the district registrar, Surendranagar. You are
hereby informed by the above authority that you should be terminated
immediately.’
Agrawal
wrote to the district registrar, Surendranagar, on January 5, 2016, asking for
protection and stating that he was within his rights in seeking information
which was going to affect his 29 years of service at the bank where he had a
clean record and that the information was anyway in public domain. He said that
if people are suspended when they ask for information under RTI, no one will
use this Act and that the bank’s action was totally illegal.
Manager of
the Dhrangadhra People’s Co-op Bank Ltd, Krishanand K Bhandari said, “Agrawal
asked for confidential matters of the bank which is one of the reasons his
services were terminated but there are 50 more reasons why his services were
terminated. The decision was taken by the board of directors.”
However, the termination letter to
Agrawal states only that he had asked for confidential information under RTI.
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