India Today: New Delhi: Friday, September 29, 2017.
One needs to
enter into an MoU and a non-disclosure agreement with Central Board of Excise
and Customs to get "sensitive information" such as addresses and
phone numbers of its offices, according to an RTI response from the Customs
Commissioners office, Chennai.
The Customs
department, Chennai has refused to provide contact information of its offices
saying it can be shared under its policy which requires an MoU and
non-disclosure agreement be signed between the department and the applicant.
Ironically,
the information denied by the Chennai office of Customs Commissioner is
available on the letter-head on which a Right to Information response was
furnished to Hyderabad activist C J Karira.
Also, the RTI
Act overrides any law in place which restrict the sharing of information.
The Section
22 of the Act states, "the provisions of this Act shall have effect
notwithstanding anything inconsistent therewith contained in the Official
Secrets Act, 1923, and any other law for the time being in force or in any
instrument having effect by virtue of any law other than this Act."
Besides, the
information denied by the office of the Commissioner of Customs, Chennai is
mandated to be proactively disclosed under Section four of the Act and its
violation can attract penalty by the Central Information Commission.
Karira had
filed an RTI application on August 14, 2017 seeking information from the CBEC in
different parts of India including name of the office, complete postal address,
office telephone numbers with STD code, office email address and working hours.
He also asked
for the internet address of the website published under the mandatory disclosure
provisions of the RTI Act under Section 4, the officers responsible for posting
the information, rules for taking action against officers who do not post or
update such information.
In a reply,
the Customs Commissioner Office, Chennai said that CBEC released data sharing
policy in February, 2015.
"As per
the CBEC-Data Sharing Policy, data falling under the sensitive category shall
ordinarily be provided against a specific authorised request on a case to case
basis and backed by with a non-disclosure agreement between the requester and
CBEC.
"For
regular and periodic requests for data, the requester shall enter into a MoU
and non-disclosure agreement for such data with CBEC," it said.
Hence, it is
information to send request for data along with the non-disclosure agreement
and memorandum of understanding as mentioned on the CBEC website. PTI ABS IKA
KK
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