MCD AVOIDS RTI APPLICATIONS–RETURN THEM BY INNOVATING NEW WAY

When you sent an RTI application to Municipal Corporation of Delhi, please address it properly as the MCD is returning applications addressed to the CPIO, MCD. Subhash Social and RTI activist Subhash Chandra Agarwal sent an RTI application by speed post on 22nd April addressed to the CPIO, MCD, Townhall, Delhi-6 which was returned to him on 28th with the remark that “no such post at MCD Townhall”. Under the government directives, RTI application can be sent to the CPIO through the Head of the Department to his/her address. RTI Act also states that such application should be transferred to the concerned PIO within five days and reply time for such applications is 35 days instead of 30. For sending RTI application to the correct addressee at MCD, exact name, designation and address can be taken from the MCD website. Bureaucracy is making some innovation daily to avoid the RTI applications. In one case, one PIO has refused to part information saying that the applicant is ‘terrorist’ though his son has laid his life for the country as he was in the defence services. Now, the applicant is approaching the Prime Minister on the issue. The News Services Division, All India Radio has stopped calling the writer on the temporary duty and when he asked the reason for this, he was, interalia, informed, “his bonafides are doubtful”. His fault, he filed some RTI applications sensing some fishy things in the working of the AIR and one such issue was awarding the contract to a private placement agency for providing casual stenos to AIR. When he asked the basis to conclude this, PIO has given an affidavit that no further information is available in the records.

Returning the application of Mr. Agarwal is a fit case of complaint u.s. 18 of the RTI Act to the Central Information Commission.

(With news inputs form Dainik Jagran, 10.5.2010)

Report by Shri M K Gupta
mkgupta100.AT.yahoo.co.in