Times of India: Meerut: Friday,
September 16, 2016.
The state
information commissioner (SIC) has imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 each on 29
information officers of various departments, including the information officer
at divisional commissioner's office, additional district magistrate and
sub-divisional magistrate of Mawana for not providing information sought by
applicants under the RTI Act. The fine will be recovered from their respective
salaries in three instalments. All the officials penalized were posted in
Meerut from 2011 to 2013.
Senior
superintendent of jail, information officer of commissioner's office, district
inspector of schools (in two cases), managing director of PVVNL (in one cases
from 2012 and two from 2013), executive engineer of PVVNL, district social
welfare officer (in two cases), chief medical officer (in two cases), executive
engineer of irrigation department, block development officers of Parikshitgarh
and Hastinapur, basic shiksha adhikari and managing director of Kisan Sewa
Sahkari Samiti are among those who have been penalised by the SIC for failing
to provide information under the RTI Act in 2013. The SIC has also slapped a
fine of the same amount on the tehsildar of Sadar for a case from 2014.
Similarly,
ADM (enforcement), information officer of commissioner's office, manager of
Savita Devi College of Mohiuddinpur, joint director of education department (in
two cases), district inspector of schools and regional manager of UP State
Industrial Development Corporation Ltd are among those who neither answered the
sought information under RTI Act in 2012 nor presented themselves in front of
the SIC despite several summons.
The fine will
be recovered in three instalments from their salaries, according to the order
issued by SIC Rajkeshwar Singh. The information had been sought by city-based
RTI activists.
The SIC also
instructed the administration to take departmental action against officers who
didn't provide information sought on time.
"Irrespective
of their department, it has been a regular practice of all the information
officers to make a mockery of the RTI Act. I have made over a hundred queries,
but not one has been answered within a month, the time limit mentioned in the
act. As the SIC sits in Lucknow, few applicants go to him. Whenever the SIC
hauls up these officials, they claim to be innocent but do not change their
attitude," alleged Lokesh Khurana, one of the RTI activists.
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