Patna,
(BiharTimes): Perhaps the citizens of Bihar
are, in some respect, more aware about Right To
Information (RTI) Act than the Public Information
Officers (PIOs) and the State Information
Commissioners. Sounds astonishing nevertheless seems
to be true, at least in the case of Bihar.
Dr Prabhakar
Sinha, a professor in B R A Bihar
University, Muzaffarpur asked for information that was
20 years old. Upon this one of the commissioners
expressed his helplessness. However, the Act does not
mention that the RTI cannot provide 20 years old
information.
Bihar
State Information Commission completed its one
year on August 25, 2007. It was formed as an
independent organ. However, the experiences of the
applicants say something else. Experts complain that
not a single act of the Commission shows that it is
unprejudiced. From the very formation of the
Commission to the hearing of the cases it often took
stand in the favour of the government officials than
the applicants.
Article
15 (5) states that the State Information
Commissioner shall be persons of eminence in public
life with wide knowledge and experience in law,
science and technology, social service, management,
journalism, mass media or administration and
governance. However, Bihar Information Commission has
three members, one Patna high court judge as chief
Information Commissioner and the other two are IAS
officers. It is said that the commissioners having
administrative background often defend PIOs and do not
impose penalty as punishment on them.
According
to the official site of Bihar State Information Commission,
the Commission has received 1600 cases till August 20, 2007
out of which 315 cases are yet to be disposed of. The first
appeal was made on November 26, 2006 that is exactly three
months and one day after the formation of the Commission.
In the
press conference called up by RTI Campaign
Bihar Gorelal Manishi, RTI activist, said that
functioning of the Commission was not up to the
expectation of people. He further said that one of the
commissioners had yelled at him once. According to him
Commission is not public friendly. Activist like
Sarfaraz often assist people in the Commission's
court. He noticed that commissioners with
administrative background are rude to common people.
According
to the RTI Act Information Commissions alone
have the power to recommend disciplinary action and
impose monetary penalties of Rs 250 per day and the
total amount shall not exceed Rs 25,000 if officials
are found to provide incorrect, incomplete or
misleading or distorted information which was subject
of the request or if they obstructed in any manner in
furnishing the information.
However,
in one year the number of those fined is
almost negligible. In one of the cases the Commission
directed a BPL applicant to pay a sum of Rs 45,000 for
the information that he asked for. This
notwithstanding, Article 7(5) which clearly states
that applicants who are below the poverty line do not
have to pay any fee under RTI Act. This shows lack of
awareness about the Act in the Commission, the
activists say.
The Commission
has overlooked these cases and are
often accused of adopting a laid-back approach. They
have imposed fine on PIOs but not more than Rs 2,000
and Rs 5,000.
When the
case gets prolonged poor people have to
undergo a lot of physical and mental harassment and
financial crunch as well. The activists felt that
Commission must order the guilty PIOs of related
department to pay them compensation about which there
is mention in the Act. Not a single such example can
be cited in this regard in the last one year.
Thus the
record of one year suggests that the
Commission has a long way to go.
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