Mumbai Mirror: Mumbai: Tuesday,
October 18, 2016.
A rather
cynical excuse Maharashtra ministers had been using for a decade now to not
reveal information under the Right to Information Act (RTI) on decisions taken
by their ministries was snatched away from them last week.
In a landmark
move forced by the doggedness of a journalist the government last Thursday
issued an order making it mandatory for all ministers and minsters of state to
have Public Information Officers (PIO) attached to them. The sole job of the
PIOs would be to provide any information related to the minister/ministry’s
decisions sought under the RTI.
For years,
Maharashtra ministers would refuse to share any information from their
ministries, including all important file notings, have PIOs to ferret out the
material asked for. Ironically, the chief minister’s office has had a PIOs all
along, but somehow successive governments found it difficult to allocate this
resource to the CM’s cabinet colleagues.
The
Government Resolution published on October 13, which has the potential to
provide a fresh impetus to the attempts to bring transparency in the
functioning of governments, says: “Cabinet ministers and ministers of state
receive many files, applications, complaints and letters from various sources,
including government authorities.
Ministers
reply to them. All these files, remarks, decisions, recommendations made by the
cabinet ministers and ministers of state come under the RTI Act. Public
Information Officers and appellate officers would be appointed to make
available this information to anybody applying for it under the RTI.”
Former
Central Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi said the ministers had for far
too long used the absence of PIOs to withhold information. “It was an illegal
excuse, but for so many years the ministers got away with it. There is a clear
provision that all the ministers’ notings, remarks, files and recommendations
must be made public under the RTI Act,” he said.
The October
13 GR was the outcome of relentless efforts made by journalist Govind Tupe, who
was twice denied information under the RTI in 2015 first by Education
Minister Vinod Tawde’s office and then by Social Justice Minister Rajkumar
Badole’s office. On both occasions, the excuse given was the same the
ministries did not have PIOs to do the job.
Stung by the
experience, Tupe wrote to State Information Commissioner Ratnakar Gaikwad
seeking that an order be issued asking the government to appoint PIOs in every
minister and minister of state’s office.
On September
24, 2015 Gaikwad issued an order to this effect. But the government did not act
on it. Tupe then filed a case of contempt. On December 19 the same year,
Information Commissioner Gaikwad issued a notice stating that if the government
was not willing to follow his order, then it must challenge the same in the
high court.
Fully aware
that a challenge in the court would prove to be embarrassing, seen as it will
as an attempt to smother right to information, the government decided to follow
the order. Yet, it took the government a year to issue the GR.
Tupe said it
will now be possible to access notings made by ministers on files. “These
notings decide the fate of a file. We will now know why, for instance, a file
has not moved or may be has moved too fast,” he said, and added that the “GR
will take the fight for transparency to the next level.”
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