The Indian Express: Pune: Sunday,
September 11, 2016.
In a move to
address the long standing complaints of Right to Information (RTI) users, the
state government has issued a circular which has now debarred public
information officers (PIOs) and appellate authorities (AA) from hearing or
taking decisions on RTI applications which seek personal information about
them. The onus of taking decisions about such applications has now been given
to the public authorities or other PIOs/AAs.
PIOS and AA
are designated by the RTI Act to take decisions about the application requests
from information seekers. In case of information related to PIO or AA, the
decision is taken by those officials themselves. RTI activists had pointed out
how this was in contravention to the set norms of jurisprudence. Judges are
often known to refuse hearing of cases if they feel there would be a conflict
of interest in them “Not before me” is the commonly used term in such cases.
The recent
notification issued by the General Administrative Department (GAD) of the state
government, other than barring the PIOS/AAs from hearing such applications,
have issued several other directives. Such applications are to be duly
registered and separate records should be kept of them. As mentioned above, the
new notification has mandated that such applications would be heard by the
public authority (this usually is the head of the establishment) or other PIOs/AAs.
Activist
Vijay Kumbhar welcomed the move by the state government. “However, this
notification shows that there were cases when PIOs and AAs took to deciding
cases where there were clear cut conflict of interest. Such cases should have
been avoided from the start but that did not happen,” he said.
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