News18: Bhopal: Wednesday, August 19, 2020.
The state information commission has
issued show-cause notices of Rs 25,000 each to four PIOs for denial of
information by presenting a variety of reasons, including passing the buck to
each other
Taking strong objection to the
persistent denial of information by government officers in Rewa district who
have been passing the buck to each other, the Madhya Pradesh state information
commission has served notices to four public information officers (PIOs).
Around a year ago, RTI activist
Shivanand Dwivedi had moved some applications with the district administration
over an alleged Rs 300 crore taxation scam that took place in panchayats in the
districts as well as in the state. The matter came to light through responses
to RTI queries in Gangeo janpad block where government employees in 38
panchayats allegedly collected and misappropriated tax money up to Rs 8 crore.
The panchayat taxation scam, which has
been making headlines, is in lieu of the tax collected locally by gram
panchayats even after a grant was sanctioned to 75 panchayats in Rewa district
of Madhya Pradesh. Accusers say the overall scam amounts to Rs 300 crore and
concerns 1,148 gram panchayats of Madhya Pradesh.
According to Dwivedi, the Rewa
collector had ordered an inquiry into the taxation scam through the block chief
executive officer.
For close to a year, RTI queries
seeking information on the scam and the subsequent probe had been pending with
the district collectorate, zila panchayat office and janpad offices with
officers there presenting a variety of reasons, including passing the burden on
each other, for denial of information.
As part of the efforts to deny information,
one of the janpad CEOs even claimed that no probe was undertaken in the matter
while others affirmed that a probe did take place.
During a WhatsApp hearing by
information commissioner Rahul Singh on August 17, RTI activist Dwivedi, and
two of the CEOs – Hanumana CEO Mungaram Mehra and former CEO of Raipur
Karchuliyan Balwan Singh Mawase were present. Former Java Janpad CEO Akhil
Shrivastava was absent, citing a medical emergency.
On a query from the information
commissioner, Mawase claimed he had forwarded the desired information to the
zila panchayat office on August 13, 2019, but he did not have a response to why
he did not reply to a letter on January 4, 2020. CEO Mungaram Mehra too offered
a circuitous reply, saying he had submitted a probe report to the ZP office but
around two months ago when the probe was constituted.
The information commissioner made it
clear that officers are free to run their offices the way they want to but
warned them that they should be ready for action in case letters received by
PIOs or deemed PIOs aren’t replied to.
The information commissioner reckoned
that the government officers were trying to mislead the applicant. He issued
show-cause notices of Rs 25,000 each to zila panchayat CEO Swapnil Wankhede,
former Janpad CEO Balwan Singh Mawase, then zila panchayat PIO Vinayak Pandey
and present PIO Abha Singh, and has summoned them to a WhatsApp hearing on
August 19 for presenting their side.
Alleging that PIOs in Madhya Pradesh
for long have been treating RTI queries like a "football", passing
them to each other, information commissioner Rahul Singh told News18 that the
PIOs in the state suffer from the "post office syndrome", sending the
queries here and there without acting upon the applications. Transparency in
government functioning is paramount for us, he said.