Times of India: Bengaluru: Tuesday,
November 08, 2016.
The Bangalore
Development Authority's (BDA) move to deny information about the proposed steel
flyover might have raised a few eyebrows, but RTI activists aren't exactly
surprised given the increasing incidence of denial of information in most government
departments.
According to
official records, over 36,000 appeals against information denial have been
pending before the Karnataka Information Commission (KIC) for years now. While
over 23,000 appeals are yet to be taken up for the first hearing, thousands
have been dragging on for more than four years.
Experts say
the pile-up shows the indifference of public information officers (PIOs) and
indicates how the authorities are going soft on officials undermining the right
to information.
"As is
the norm, an applicant approaches the PIO's superior official designated as the
first appellant authority , before moving the KIC. However, for reasons best
known to them, the first appellant authorities across departments haven't been
active and this is the main reason for the increasing instances of declining
information," said RTI expert YG Muralidharan.
Taking note
of the tendency, the KIC shot off a series of letters to the chief secretary,
seeking steps from the government to ensure stringent action against defaulting
officials, but to no avail. "In one of the letters to the chief secretary
in March, I requested the government to make it mandatory that the the first
appellant authorities hear the appeals and punish officials if they're found
guilty. More stringent action such as department inquiry must be taken.
However, the government is yet to respond to our letters," information
commissioner L Krishnamurthy told TOI.
The KIC is
currently headless after chief commissioner DN Narasimharaju resigned last week.
Sunil Panwar,
KIC secretary, said the commission is proposing to make it mandatory for the
department to proactively disclose information that is most frequently sought.
"Proactive
disclosure is to display information of the website and notice boards of the
department concerned.The information about the steel flyover should have been
part of proactive disclosure under Section 4(1) (b) of the RTI Act," said
Muralidhar.
THE
DEFAULTERS
The KIC is
estimated to have received 1,500 appeals every month in 2015-16. Its annual
report for 2014-15 cites 12,727 instances of information denial across
departments. While rural development and revenue topped the list with over
3,000 cases, even the department of personal & administrative reforms
(DAPR), the nodal department for implementing RTI, is found to have declined
information in 629 cases. The department of municipal administration and urban
development (MA&UD), education department, pollution control board, and BDA
are among other top defaulters.
PENAL
CLAUSE INEFFECTIVE
According to
a penal clause in the RTI law, the PIO declining information is liable to be
fined `250 a day and a maximum of ` 25,000.
However, with
senior officials allgedly going l soft on the PIOs, only a ), few are being
penalized.
And many of
those penalized don't pay up.
For instance,
an official in Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), is found to have
declined information in 25 instances. He was fined `2.5 lakh by the KIC six
months go but is yet to pay the penalty.
"Such is
the indifference that no action was taken against the official even after the
KIC wrote to the BBMP commissioner," said BH Veeresh, managing trustee of
Right to Information Study Centre.
The urban
development department has paid the highest penalty of `48.71 lakh.
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