DNA: Ahmedabad: Friday, April 08,
2016.
The State
Information Commission (SIC) has pulled up appellate authorities - the first
line of appeal under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, for passing orders
without proper application of mind and for having a lacklustre attitude towards
their work. The commission, in its annual report of 2014-15, has strongly
called upon to appellate authorities to perform their duties and
responsibilities under the RTI Act with utmost care and seriousness.
However,
activists feel that the commission has also been lenient in dealing with
appellate authorities and has let them go scot free in spite of repeated cases
of negligence. RTI activist and founder trustee of Mahiti Adhikar, Gujarat
Pahel (MAGP) Harinesh Pandya, commenting on the issue said, “Appellate authorities
are neither effective nor competent. In fact, 30% of the total cases in SIC are
there because appellate authorities did not conduct any hearing in the 30-day
deadline since the filing of first appeal before the authority.”
He pointed
out that in only in one case in Gujarat, in December 2006, state chief
information commissioner RN Das had imposed a penalty of Rs25,000 on appellate
authority Atul Kalidas Patel, chairman of Vadu Juth Kelvani Mandal, Kadi, along
with the public information officer Prahladbhai Patel for not providing
information to the applicant Dahyabhai Patel. Patel had asked for information
about the utilisation of funds from the MP Local Area Development Scheme
(MPLADS).
Since then,
not a single appellate authority has been penalised and activists feel that
this has led to a weakening in the system and given rise to lackadaisical
attitude as none of the appellate authorities now overturn the decisions of
PIOs when information is denied and applicants are almost always forced to go for
second appeal to get the information they seek.
Ruing the
situation in the state, RTI activist Pankaj Bhatt said, “Other state
information commissioners are penalising appellate authorities but here in
Gujarat, in spite of gross negligence, no application of mind on appeals filed,
and deadlines not being met, appellate authorities are not fined by the SIC.
This is making the law ineffective in Gujarat.”
Commenting on
this, Gujarat chief information commissioner Balwant Singh said, “There is no
provision in the law to penalise appellate authorities. Also, the Supreme Court
has set aside orders where appellate authorities have been penalised.
Sufficient reason should be there for considering an appellate authority as a
deemed PIO. We have pointed out these lacunas in the law to the government.”
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