Times of India: Chandigarh:
Wednesday, August 29, 2018.
Taking cognizance of a
petition alleging three years' delay in passing an order by one of the state
information commissioners of Haryana, the Punjab and Haryana high court has
issued notice to the information commissioner seeking his response on the issue.
In this case, state information commissioner (now retired) Yoginder Paul Gupta
allegedly sat over a judgment for over three years in relation to an appeal
seeking information from Chaudhary Devi Lal University (CDLU) Sirsa.
Justice Augustine
George Masih passed these orders while hearing a petition filed by Om Prakash
Wadhwa, a retired academician from Rohtak. In his plea, Wadhwa has sought
directions for quashing the order that was heard on September 14, 2015, and
pronouncement was made on January 12, 2018, in an appeal filed by him against
the denial of information to him by the CDLU Sirsa.
Wadhwa has argued that
the Supreme Court has already made it clear in its decisions that inordinate
delay in delivering the judgement by itself was a ground to set-aside the
judgment. He has further sought directions to state information commission to
constitute a bench of two information commissioners and decide his case afresh.
Directions has also been sought to penalized the then SPIO Rajbir Singh Dalal
for not supplying the information under the RTI act.
It has been argued that
such unprecedented delay by the state information commissioner has proved that
he could not handle the responsibility he was bestowed upon.
Initially, on September
20, 2013, Wadhwa had sought some information under the RTI Act in relation to
Professor Rajbir Singh Dalal, who was also SPIO of CDLU Sirsa at that time.
As he did not provided
the information, Wadhwa filed an appeal with the first appellate authority on
November 1, 2013, and then with the SIC on December 6, 2013, seeking the
information. Hearing his appeal, then state information commissioner Gupta on
March 25, 2014, directed the SPIO to provide complete information to Wadhwa.
Gupta also issued
notice to the SPIO asking him to explain as to why penalty of Rs 25,000 not be
imposed upon him for delaying the information.
After hearing SPIO's
replies, Gupta reserved the order in the case on September 14, 2015. However,
after three years on January 12, 2018, Gupta passed an order exonerating the
SPIO.
The petitioner has
argued that SPIO has been exonerated even when he failed to file appropriate
response to the show cause notice as well as to supply the complete
information.
Besides Gupta, HC has
also issued notices to Sultan Singh who then chairman of business management
department at the university as well as the first appellate authority under RTI
Act.
Then SPIO Rajbir Singh
Dalal and other officials of CDLU have also been issued notice and directed to
file their reply on the issue by November 13.
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