Hindustan Times: Punjab: Sunday, July 29, 2018.
The state
information commission, set up in 2005, acts as a tool to redress public
grievances. It has 10 information commissioners and is led by a chief
information commissioner. It has a pendency of 2,129 cases with about 500 new
cases every month.
“The cases
take three to 10 sittings and most reach a conclusive end, leaving less scope
for litigation in civil and high courts,” says a commission member, requesting
anonymity. He says the flow of information is slow. Initially, public
information officers (PIOs) tend to deny information, a trend chief information
commissioner SS Channy accepts. “The flow of information is fine but some
people in the government take unusually long,” he says.
Surinder
Awasthi, a former commissioner, says, “The commission shouldn’t become a tool
for right to information (RTI) activists. Litigants should appear with
different kinds of pleas not a particular set of them.” The commission should
also not become a place to park politicians who can’t be adjusted elsewhere.
Members want
their pay and perks revised in keeping with the latest pay panel
recommendations. They sought parity in distribution of departments among the
commissioners.
Litigants say
in a few important cases, all the commission did was to transfer them from one
court to another.
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