Daily Pioneer: Chandigarh: Wednesday,
August 17, 2016.
Causing
“inordinate delay” in providing information under the Right to Information
(RTI) Act has cost Punjab’s four Public Information Officers (PIOs). For, the
State Information Commission has slapped a penalty of Rs 25,000 each on four
PIOs.
The penalty
was imposed by the single bench of State Chief information Commissioner SS
Channy, said Commission’s official spokesperson.
Ludhiana’s
Kundan Bhawan president Rohit Sabharwal has sought information from Ludhiana
Municipal Corporation PIO on 24 December, 2015, under the RTI Act, 2005, which
was to be provided by the respondent-PIOs Bhupinder Singh, Danesh, Ankit Midha,
and Navneet Khokhar (building inspector-cum-APIO, deemed PIO), said the
spokesperson.
“Failing to
get any information within 30 days as mandated under Section 7(1) of the RTI
Act, 2005, the appellant had filed first appeal with the First Appellate
Authority and then approached the State Commission in second appeal under
Section 19(3) of the RTI Act, 2005,” said the spokesperson.
Spokesperson
informed that the Commission noticed that although the First Appellate
Authority Ghanshyam Thori, Additional Commissioner-cum-FAA had passed the
formal speaking order and directed the respondent-PIOs to furnish the
information free of cost within seven days, none of the respondent-PIOs has
supplied the information or furnished any kind of response.
CIC, in his
order, has stated, “Such kind of failure on the part of the respondents is
totally intolerable and if they are spared for 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.”
Imposing
penalty of Rs 25,000 each on these four defaulting PIOs, the Commission has
asserted, “The Commission left with no other option but to decide the question
of imposition of penalty and quantum thereof upon Bhupinder Singh, Danesh,
Ankit Midha, and Navneet Khokhar. 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.”
The amount of
penalty would be deducted from the salaries of defaulting PIOs for the month of
August and September and be deposited in the treasury under the relevant head.
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