Subhash Agrawal for BeyondHeadlines
Media-persons were shocked and surprised when shown a recent letter dated 09.05.2013 relating to a petition returned by Central Information Commission (CIC) filed vide diary-number 119530 dated 15.03.2013 with three out of eight reasons ticked finding alleged discrepancy as per rule 8 of ‘Right To Information Rules 2012’. One reason for return was that documents filed with petition were not legible and readable. It is for Chief Information Commissioner in his capacity as administrative head to personally look into the returned documents to decide if the returned petition and documents were legible and readable. Strict-most action should be taken against CIC-staffer in case Chief Information Commissioner finds the documents legible and readable.
Two other reasons for return were that petition was not filed as per format decided by authorities and indexing of documents was not done as per required format. How a petitioner not knowing to draw tables can be expected to submit petition and index only in format decided by the authorities? User-friendly Act being adopted by commoners without requiring assistance of lawyers, has been ‘behind-the-curtain’ modified through such absurd rules so that lawyers may become necessity for this wonderful piece of legislation giving powers to citizens like that of a Parliamentarian to quiz governance through RTI petitions.
Others un-ticked reasons include not enclosing copies of RTI petitions, appeal-orders etc. In many cases CIC is approached because Appellate Authority does not pass an order! A unique case was decided by the Commission where copy of RTI petition could not be practically filed because CPIO’s vague response did not carry any reference/date/subject-matter or any other such aspect which could be related with any of the RTI petitions filed by the petitioner. Another registry of a Commissioner returned the petition because suddenly it required attestation of photo-copies of documents even though an affidavit was submitted with the petition for the contents of petition being true.
Chief Information Commissioner and Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT) should look into the matter, and withdraw such absurd rules imposed in the year 2012 grossly misused by registries of some of the Central Information Commissioners. Or else, RTI Act should be altogether abandoned instead of unnecessarily beating drums towards gimmick transparency to befool public.
(Writer is Guinness Record Holder for most letters in newspapers and an RTI activist)
