Chandigarh Tribune: Ludhiana: Friday,
August 19, 2016.
Taking a
serious note of non-compliance of the provisions of the Right to Information
Act, the Chief Information Commissioner (CIC), Punjab, SS Channi, has imposed a
penalty of Rs 25,000 each on assistant town planners (ATPs)-cum-Public
Information Officers Bhupinder Singh, Ankit Midha, Danish and building
inspector Navnit Khokhar, who is also APIO (designated as PIO) at the Municipal
Corporation here.
Passing
orders on appeal case 1681 of 2016 filed by Rohit Sabharwal, president of the
Council of RTI Activists, the CIC noted that the said employees of the MC
building branch had failed to provide information on 90 commercial buildings in
Zone C even after the orders passed by the first appellate authority, Ghanshyam
Thori, Additional Commissioner, and later by the State Information Commission.
The CIC
observed: “Such kind of failure on the part of the respondents is totally
intolerable and if they are spared or not giving any punishment that will give
an impression to the rest of the respondents that they can just get away with
non-compliance of the RTI Act which has been enacted to ensure participative nature of management
between the public and the public authorities and also to know as to what is
happening behind the closed doors with regard to the governance affairs of the
public authorities and their functioning.”
Ruling that
the written reply filed by the respondent MC officials was not considered
satisfactory and it was a fit case for imposition of penalty, the CIC ordered:
“Under these circumstances, I am left with no other option but to decide the
question of imposition of penalty and quantum thereof upon Bhupinder Singh,
Danesh, PIO, Ankit Midha, PIO and Navneet Khokhar, Building Inspector-cum-APIO
(deemed PIO), all from the Municipal Corporation, Ludhiana. In this case the
intervening period is too large and in addition their failure to comply with
the orders of the FAA and also of the Commission. Accordingly, a penalty of Rs
25,000 is imposed on each one of them.”
The
Commission further directed that the amount of penalty (Rs 25000) should be
deducted from their salary in two equal monthly instalments and be deposited in
the government treasury under head 0070-Other Administrative Services-60-Other
Services-800-Other Receipts-86-Fees under the Right to Information Act.
Building
inspectorcharge-sheeted
In the meantime,
acting on the report submitted by the Senior Town Planner and the Municipal
Town Planner, the Local Government Department, Punjab, has issued a charge
sheet to building inspector Navneet Khokhar while also shifting him to Moga.
The action has been taken against the building inspector for dereliction of
duty and failure to provide information about illegal commercial buildings to
his superior officials.
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