Re: [HumJanenge] CIC loses on penalty strikes

Dear Manu, When the CPIO is not competent to interpret the provisons of the RTI Act, he should have asked the Commissioner (s) who has / have dropped or withdrawn the penality, as in these cases, Commissioners must first know the provisions of the Act before condoning / dropping or withdraing penalty. The CPIO also had the option to take legal opinion from the legal cell of CIC on the issue before replying the application which has not been exercised.  From the reply, it is evident that the CIC has indirectly admitted that there is no provision to condone / drop or withdraw the penality. The Act clearly states that the penalty shall be imposed in case of violation of the Act. You may file first/ second appeal on these lines as the CPIO has not given complete information and has put the onus on you to seek legal advice from a profession on an action taken by CIC.  If an applicant is aggrived, the CIC does not review its decision but from your mail, it appears that it reviews its decision if the CPIO or Public Authority is aggrived.  As per CIC own decision it cannot review its own order and the aggrived party should go to the Court. What is the use of recommending disciplinary action if follow-up is lacking and no action is taken against the CPIO for the flagrant violation of the RTI Act? Dear Manu, I congratule you for this bold step.  Keep it up and take the matter to the logical conclusion. U have raised a very crucial issue. On Wed, 20/7/11, Manu <moudgilmanu@gmail.com> wrote: From: Manu <moudgilmanu@gmail.com> Subject: [HumJanenge] CIC loses on penalty strikes To: "HumJanenge Forum People's Right to Information, RTI Act 2005" <HumJanenge@googlegroups.com> Date: Wednesday, 20 July, 2011, 11:16 AM The Central Information Commission has dropped penalty proceedings against errant officials while having no power to do so PICTURE THIS: Between March 2007 and October 2010, the Central Information Commission set aside, dropped or modified 12 of its own orders in which it had penalised several public officials for violating the RTI Act. Worse still, the CIC does not know under what provisions it reviewed its own decisions. According to documents available with GOI Monitor, the CIC showed leniency on errant officials belonging to prominent public authorities such as the National Crime Records Bureau, Indira Gandhi National Open University, Labour Commission, Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital, Chandigarh Administration and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. What is noteworthy, however, is that the CIC does not have any authority to review its own decisions. The power lies with the High Court. For instance, all this time when the CIC was reducing or quashing penalties, various high courts of the country were also busy reviewing several decisions of the CIC in which penalty amounts had been imposed on public officials. When asked through another RTI application to list the provisions under which penalty proceedings had been dropped or modified, the CIC replied: "You may take legal opinion in the matter. CPIO is not competent to interpret the provisions of the Act." The reply was undersigned by the deputy secretary and joint registrar, CIC. Though the waived off penalty amount of Rs 2.35 lakh may seem negligible, the action has far reaching consequences because the penalty provision is provided in the RTI Act to deter officials from hiding or providing false information. However, the leniency showered by information commissioners on the errant public officials is well known. According to a study done by the Public Cause Research Foundation, the rate of penalty imposition by information commissioners across India was barely 3 per cent in 2009-10 which resulted in a loss of Rs 86 crore to the state exchequer. The actual loss figures may be much higher because the study did not take into account seven more provisions to impose penalty other than delay in providing information. The fact that CIC has been acting lenient on the negligent public officials can be gauged from the 2009 case of P.C. Sekhar Vs. New India Assurance Company Limited. In its final decision, the CIC imposed a penalty of Rs 25,000 on the CPIO N K Singh for delay in transmission of information to the applicant. Singh asked the CIC to review its decision and an internal inquiry was marked by the CIC to be done by the CMD of New India Assurance Company Limited. The report submitted by the CMD supported the CPIO and instead blamed one of his subordinates, Shailendra Shukla, for "holding on to the information and also keeping his superiors entirely in the dark on the issue". Shukla, it was further claimed, had since quit the company and was not traceable. Notably, the same information was not provided to the CIC when it had first issued a show cause notice to the CPIO on why the penalty amount should not be imposed on him. However, the commission still took mercy on the CPIO and dropped the entire penalty proceedings. In another case Mehar Singh Vs Under Secretary (Home), UT Chandigarh, CIC imposed a penalty of Rs 25,000 on the CPIO for delay of 100 days in providing the information. The CPIO filed a review petition claiming that other officials in the UT Administration should be held responsible for the delay since the information requested pertained to their departments and they did not furnish it to her on time. CIC asked the concerned department heads to fix responsibility. Thereafter two other officials were additionally held responsible for the delay but the department heads claimed they were diligent in their work and hence should not be penalised. The CIC again took mercy and observed that since no single authority could be identified for the delay the penalty proceedings could be set aside. Besides the inadequacy shown in reviewing the penalties, CIC has also been negligent in following up the disciplinary action recommended against the officials who persistently fail to accept RTI application or provide information. There were total of 21 officials belonging to top ministries and departments including the Ministry of Home Affairs, Indian Air Force, Ministry of Agriculture and Delhi Development Authority (DDA) who had been recommended for disciplinary action by the CIC between October 2005 and December 2010. No records regarding the action taken by concerned departments on the recommendations of CIC are maintained. In fact, the departments are not even asked if any action had really been taken to punish those who violate the RTI Act. Such an attitude of the CIC would only help undermine the cause of transparency and accountability as envisaged under the RTI Act. Visit www.goimonitor.com for more info See the documents accessed through RTI by GOI Monitor here: https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B8HgtOxJw4dVOWQ0ZWZjNzAtYzRlZS00YWY0LWIwZTktN2IxZWQwM2E2ODk3&hl=en_US