Times of
India: Chennai: Thursday, September 12, 2019.
An
RTI activist has claimed that the assistant public information officer (APIO)
of St Thomas Mount police district has brushed aside his RTI queries by
branding them “not specific”.
RTI
activist ‘Citizen’ Senthil sought to know how many personnel are working at the
police stations in Madipakkam and Adambakkam along with the name, designation
and time served and the stipulated procedures followed by police when a road
accident happens. For these seemingly innocuous questions, the APIO of the St
Thomas Mount police district replied that the information could not be provided
as the questions are “not specific”.
Senthil
said public information officers are resorting to merely copy-pasting answers,
instead of providing information. “I had posed similar questions, seeking
details of straight forward officers in the police force two years ago. To
that, at least there was a reply stating that they do not maintain such
records. But for these straight-forward questions too they are not providing
information,” he said.
Senthil
received the reply to his set of 11 questions from the assistant commissioner,
Madipakkam range, on August 28. The APIO had responded stating that since the
information sought for is not specific, the information could not be provided
under section 6 (1) of the RTI act, to ten questions barring one. This time
too, Senthil had posed the question of upright officers in St Thomas Mount
police district. But unlike the previous instance, Senthil’s question was not
even responded with a plausible reply.
The
RTI activist also wanted to know why complainants are not issued Community
Service Registers (CSR) immediately after a complaint and the reasons for delay
in filing FIR. These also elicited the same response as the other questions.
The
only question to which some thought was put into answering was a query on the
number of days within which an FIR has to be registered in case of a vehicle
theft complaint. To this, the APIO had responded stating that procedures laid
down by Supreme Court in Lalita Kumari vs Government of U.P case is being
adhered to.
“There
has been a clear lax on the part of police officials in providing CSRs and
registering FIR. The copy-paste answers were given also to my question on the
procedures to reclaim vehicles involved in accidents and the number of CSR
issued between January 2019 and March 2019,” Senthil said.
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