Compensation to be paid if info not provided under RTI

PNS | Bhubaneswar

The Right to Information Act would be followed in a more stringent way in the State. If any department fails to provide the information as sought by the public, the department would be liable to pay compensation to the person. Earlier, the concerned official was only liable to pay the penalty. 

A decision to this effect was taken at a high level high level meeting on Implementation of RTI held at the State Secretariat on Friday. While the Chief Secretary presided over the meeting, the State Commissioner Jagadananda attended the meeting. Secretaries of all the department all attended the meeting.

It was decided that a special cell would solely be created whose basic job is to provide the information to the public. This scheme has already been introduced in the Bihar and it has been a huge success.

Information and Public Relation (I&PR) Department would act as a nodal agency. All the departments will provide the information to the department on a monthly basis. By the end of May 31, a detailed annual report would be prepared.

Steps would be taken to provide information to the people under the RTI in the tribal areas without any charge. So far action has been taken against 145 officials for not imparting information under the RTI

RTI will be made more accessible: Chavan

30 May 2009, 0116 hrs IST, TNN

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-4594992,prtpage-1.cms

NEW DELHI: The government will study practices in other countries before establishing a separate directorate for prosecution, minister of state for personnel, public grievances and pensions Prithviraj Chavan said. Chavan, who took over formal charge on Friday, said that various systems will be taken in to consideration and the proposition of setting up a directorate of prosecution will be put up before Cabinet soon. 

"We are studying the practices in other countries and will bring the proposal to Cabinet soon,'' Chavan said. Prosecution is currently under the CBI that is overburdened with more than 8,000 cases under investigation. 

The minister added that efforts would be made to make Right to Information Act more accessible. Replies to RTI queries on the Internet and filing of RTI on phone were facilities that were being looked at. "We have already kickstarted work on setting up a call centre so that people can ask for information on the phone. The system is already operational in Bihar and we will introduce some refinements before introducing it in some states. The facility is likely to start in Delhi soon,'' he said. Chavan however refused to specify any deadline on these plans. 

Denying that CBI was under any political interference, Chavan admitted that there was a public perception that the agency worked on the direction of its political masters. "This perception exists and we must change it. The government will work towards making CBI a more effective and efficient agency,'' Chavan said. 

RTI Query Forces Jamia to Set up Panel to Probe Allegations Against VC

Publication: Times Of India Delhi; Date: May 29, 2009; Section: Times City; Page: 4

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Jamia sets up panel to probe allegations against Hasan

New Delhi: Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) has set up a committee to probe allegations against vice chancellor Mushirul Hasan that he misused his office during appointments and naming some buildings on the campus. The inquiry committee will be headed by retired judge of Delhi High Court S K Aggarwal.

    Hasan, whose term as VC ends on June 9 this year, is alleged to have misused his office in the appointments for AJK Mass Communication and Research Centre (AJK MCRC) and the newly established dental institute. Questions are also being raised over the naming of the history department block after his father Mohibbul Hasan.

    Complainant Mohammad Shadab Sami filed an RTI after he was not allowed to join the varsity despite being appointed as lecturer by Jamia committee.

    Said Sami, ‘‘I had received an offer letter from Jamia’s selection committee, stating that I was appointed as a lecturer of still photography at AJK MCRC. However, I was not allowed to join despite completing all formalities. I was supposed to join by April 13, 2009. I just wanted to know if there was a valid cause for the inability of the VC to issue my joining letter. I sent him letters regarding the above enquiries and got no reply. In the mean time, candidates who got the appointment letters for other departments assumed their duties.’’

    While Iftikhar Ahmed, director, AJK MCRC refused to comment on the issue, Hasan said: ‘‘I have nothing to say as I have acted according to the statues and ordinances.’’ However, a senior faculty of AJK MCRC commented: ‘‘There can’t be smoke without any fire.’’

    Sami also said according to HRD regulations, no VC of central universities can either appoint or hold any appointments two months prior to his last date of tenureship. Rakhshanda Jalil, director, media and culture, JMI, said an inquiry committee was constituted once it was brought to the notice of the VC that the complainant was the nephew of the then registrar. Jalil said: ‘‘During the last few months we had to hold selection committees in AJK MCRC and the Faculty of Dental Studies. We informed the secretary, human resource development, about it vide a letter dated April 9, 2009.’’

48-hour Jail Experience of RTI Activists: Part I

Mumbai: RTI activists waiting in the lobby of SIC for the police to arrive and arrest them! 

How we landed in Jail – a brief account

Dear friends,

Since our release last Thursday after 48 hours in police and judicial custody, we have been repeatedly asked: “What exactly happened? Why were you charged with trespass, rioting, assault etc? Did you go on a rampage in Dr Suresh Joshi’s office or courtroom? How can singing Jana Gana Mana get somebody into so much trouble?”

People also ask, “How did it feel to be in jail? How are you feeling now? Aren’t you ashamed of being branded as criminals?”

On behalf of our small group of jailbirds, who proudly call themselves the Jana Gana Mana group, let me put the facts on record. I shall write this in three parts:

Part I: What exactly happened at Maharashtra State Information Commission on Tuesday, 19th May? Why did we get arrested? Why did CSIC Dr Joshi lodge an FIR with the Police?

Part II: What were the events in the earlier months that built up to this incident? Were we very aggressive or did we misbehave in earlier meetings? What put Dr Joshi into his negative / angry / vindictive frame of mind?

Part III: How did it feel to be in police lockup, taken around in police vans, marched barefoot to the Magistrate court, and sleep among 130 assorted inmates at Arthur Road jail? How was the food, and how were our conversations with undertrials and hardened criminals?

Today, I shall write only Part I.

What happened on the afternoon of 19th May

Dr Srikant Prabhu, a 67-year-old veterinarian, had a second appeal hearing before Dr Suresh Joshi at 4.30 pm. He was accompanied by G R Vora and Mohd Afzal. They completed that hearing before the other activists arrived one by one at the State Information Commission.

In fact, we were not one homogenous group. Two groups and some individual activists pursuing their own cause were together at this meeting to press for clean implementation of the RTI Act.

·  Krishnaraj Rao, G R Vora, Mohd Afzal and Sunil Ahya comprise one group. They had been following up Dr Suresh Joshi for proper implementation of RTI Act since November 2008.

·  Another group consists of Mukund Parikh, Dr Srikant Prabhu, Sanjay Ghatalia and K N Singh.

·  Vijay Chavan is a social activist who had been pursuing a number of second appeals, and successfully got several PIOs penalized.

·  Ravi Kiran Haldipur was an appellant who had recently become interested in our cause and our methods.

Our group – the first one -- submitted a letter (Pl scroll down to view the letter) to the inward department. The letter warned that if Information Commissioners implemented penal provisions of RTI Act in an arbitrary or mala fide way, then Sec. 217 & 218 of the Indian Penal Code would be applicable. They could be hauled to court and jailed for such action. Attached to this letter were relevant judgments of High Courts and Supreme Court.

Having submitted the letter, we spoke to Dr Joshi’s Executive Assistant Kalpana Gavas, and asked for a time to see Dr Joshi. She said that he was too busy to see us, as he had a doctor’s appointment at 5.30.

So we said we would go inside and observe his court hearings. (This is something that we have been doing a couple of times every month, in groups of varying sizes.) Again, she consulted Dr Joshi and said that only five of us could go inside at one time. We decided to disregard this.

We entered, stood or sat at the back, and observed one hearing. After the hearing was completed, we requested Dr Joshi (who had a band-aid on his forehead) for a brief meeting to submit our letter personally. He granted us five minutes and asked us to come to the front. Dr Joshi said that he would henceforth meet us and other activists only on the first Monday of every month. We told him that this was unacceptable, as the list of things that he had promised and had not implemented was growing longer, requiring more frequent meetings.

Suddenly, a well-known social activist who had come with us for the first time, stood up and announced that he always began this kind of meetings by singing the National Anthem in order to invoke a patriotic spirit. (He had earlier sung the National Anthem at the office of Dr Patangrao Kadam, Maharashtra Housing Minister.) He then unilaterally started singing Jana Gana Mana. The rest of us joined him in chorus. Dr Joshi remained seated for the initial three lines, and then shook his head in dismay, got up and left the room by the back door which leads to his chamber.

After we finished singing, we waited a few minutes for him to return, and then someone went outside to find that Dr Joshi was leaving. Standing in the lobby, he said loudly that this was not the way, and he was calling police. We said that if that was indeed the case, they we would wait for the police to arrive.

When we asked Ms Gavas again whether we were required to wait any longer, she asked us to wait. Approximately an hour after Dr Joshi’s departure, around 15 policemen arrived, took the statements of Ms Gavas and other office staff, took the group to Marine Drive Police Station in a police van and told us to sign us the arrest/surrender form. We were put in police custody at Azad Maidan Police Station overnight. Next day we were produced in Court and granted bail on a surety of Rs 20,000 per head. As we could not produce this at short notice, we were sent to Judicial Custody at Arthur Road Jail.

We were charged with the following offences:

Section 143- Whoever is a member of an unlawful assembly shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to six month, or with fine, or with both.

Section 145- Joining or continuing in unlawful assembly, knowing it has been commanded to disperse- Whoever joins or continues in an unlawful assembly, knowing that such unlawful assembly has been commanded in the manner prescribed by law to disperse, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both.

Section 146- Rioting- Whenever force or violence is used by an unlawful assembly, or by any member thereof, in prosecution of the common object of such assembly, every member of such assembly is guilty of the offence of rioting.

Section 448- Whoever commits house-trespass shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to one year, or with fine or which may extend to one thousand rupees, or with both.

Section 452- House-trespass after preparation for hurt, assault or wrongful restraint- Whoever commits house-trespass, having made preparation for causing hurt to any person or for assaulting any person, or for wrongfully restraining any person, or for putting any person in fear of hurt, or of assault, or of wrongful restraint, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to seven years, and shall also be liable to fine.

Section 353- Assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty- Whoever assaults or uses criminal force to any person being a public servant in the execution of his duty as such public servant, or with intent to prevent or deter that person from discharging his duty as such public servant, or in consequence of anything done or attempted to be done by such person in the lawful discharge of his duty as such public servant, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both.

Dear friends, many of us agree that the Jana Gana Mana singing was unnecessary and distracting. It happened in an unpremeditated way, and was not to our liking… but once someone in our large group started singing, we felt that the only gracious thing to do was stand at attention and join in.  We could not stop him midway by poking his ribs or kicking his shin, could we?

 Our conduct as a group may at worst be described as inappropriate or unruly. However, does this justify the serious charges levelled against us viz. assault, rioting, house-trespass etc? Does this justify the police harassment?

The response by Dr Joshi and the police was out of proportion... a bit like throwing someone into jail for crossing the road when the light was red. Don't you think so?

Warmly,

Krish

98215 88114

Source: Yahoogroup: [rti4empowerment] 

===================================

19.5.2009

 

To

Dr Suresh V Joshi,

Chief Information Commissioner,

New Administrative Bldg., 13th Floor,

Opp. Mantralaya, Mumbai – 400032.

 

Sub:  YOUR ACTIONS ARE A JAILABLE OFFENCE

 Sir,

We wish to bring to your notice that your non-adherence to the RTI Act while conducting hearings and passing Orders on Second Appeals and Complaints, making a mockery of the Act and aiding and abetting corruption amount to an offence that may attract imprisonment, fines or both.

The very purpose for which this Act was enacted was to bring about transparency, accountability, better governance and reduction of corruption. Your Orders lead to the exact opposite. Your filibustering tactics are causing other SICs in Maharashtra also to shun transparency. This is clearly reflected in their Orders.

Being a retired public servant and an IAS officer, you may be aware of the below provisions of Sec. 217 and 218 of Indian Penal Code under which you are punishable.

IPC Section 217.  Public servant disobeying direction of law with intent to save person from punishment...
“Whoever, being a public servant, knowingly disobeys any direction of the law as to the way in which he is conduct himself as such public servant, intending thereby to save, or knowing it to be likely that he will thereby save, any person from legal punishment, or subject him to a less punishment than that to which he is liable… shall be punished with imprisonment… for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both.”

IPC Section 218. Public servant framing incorrect record or writing with intent to save person from punishment…
“Whoever, being a public servant… charged with the preparation of any record or other writing, frames that record or writing in a manner which he knows to be incorrect, with intent to cause, or knowing it to be likely that he will thereby cause, loss or injury to the public or to any person, or with intent thereby to save, or knowing it to be likely that he will thereby save, any person from legal punishment… shall be punished with imprisonment… for a term which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both.”

 

Please consider this as a final warning and mend your ways. Otherwise we shall be constrained to file FIR and move the judiciary to pass strictures against you, dismiss you for dereliction of duty, non-implementation of laws and award you imprisonment and fines for aiding and abetting corruption.

We are already initiating legal action against you under these sections, and recent orders of High Courts and Supreme Court (copies attached) in favour of mandatory penalty under RTI Section 20 and reasoned Speaking Order.

If you improve your functioning subsequent to receiving this letter, kindly inform us of the same with evidence. We hope you will not face the ignominy of being dismissed from service, and/or being jailed at the end of your career.

Thanking you,

Yours Sincerely,

G R Vora        Mohd. Afzal  Sunil Ahya      Krishnaraj Rao

CC: Chief Justice of Bombay High Court

Encl:

1)      Recent Delhi High Court Order on RTI Penalties

2)      Order of Punjab & Haryana High court on Mandatory Penal Provisions

3)      Supreme Court on the importance of reasoned Orders by appellate authorities

=============================================

Another bureaucrat for information panel raises hackles

HT Correspondent, Chandigarh : May 26

(From: http://epaper.hindustantimes.com/artMailDisp.aspx?article=27_05_2009_006_004&typ=1&pub=722)

WITH ANOTHER bureaucrat on the verge of being appointed as Chief Information Commissioner (CIC), a host of citizen groups, civil society organisations and legal activists have come together to condemn the move.

Punjab Chief Secretary Ramesh Inder Singh is tipped to take over as CIC, with the government reported to have already got the mandatory approval from the Leader of the Opposition.The top IAS officer is expected to take premature retirement for the purpose, as he is otherwise due for retirement only in October 2009.

Speaking at a press conference here today, many social activists said the appointment would be in violation of the spirit of the RTI Act and the Constitution of India.

Vowing to fight against the “brazen and illegal action tooth-and-nail”, Hemant Goswami of the Citizens Voice said that under the RTI Act, for the appointment of a commissioner, a committee had to be set up to deliberate on all applications received for the post.

As per the Act, members of the Information Commission were supposed to be eminent personalities with wide experience in law, science, social service, management, etc.

However, in Punjab most information commissioners were from government background.

Goswami said that in this case, the government had not even advertised the position or set up any committee for the selection.Applications sent in by social workers were not even considered. “The government has moved the file for the Chief Secretary even while he is in service. This in itself is against IAS service rules,” he added.

Advocate H.C. Arora said even the present commissioners from bureaucracy were not performing their job satisfactorily.

Most of them attended to work only 20-30 hours a month. “Except for General P.K. Grover (retd), none of the information commissioners appear to be serious in the discharge of their job,” he alleged.

Earlier, several social activists and organisations have sent a joint representation to the Punjab Governor, the Chief Minister and the Leader of Opposition against the appointment of another bureaucrat in the commission.

“We are even contemplating criminal action under Sections 166, 217 and 219 of the IPC against some of the information commissioners,” Goswami said. The representation to the Chief Minister read, “…none of the commissioners holds hearing for more than six hours a week…. Each commissioner costs the exchequer at least Rs 1.50 lakh a month. The new appointment seems nothing more than reward for sycophancy.”

 

Anna Hazare says, “Get jailed in large numbers!”

“Good work, boys!” said Anna Hazare to us -- the 10 activists jailed for 48 hours on false charges of rioting, assault and trespass by Maharashtra CSIC Dr Suresh Joshi.

See video-clip of our conversation with Anna yesterday at Sahyadri Guest House: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XIhIT40mQk

“I was told about what you fellows did. Going to prison isn’t a bad thing,” Anna laughed. “Remember, our Freedom-fighters did lots of that. I too was sentenced to three months imprisonment, but they kicked me out after only 8 days when things got too hot to handle for the State government. It rocked the government. We must organize in large numbers to have lots more of this sort of action and really shake these guys to their senses,” he said, soon after his meeting with Chief Minister Ashok Chavan.

We thanked Anna for inspiring us, and assured him that we would stay aggressive for the cause of proper RTI implementation.

Posted by Krishnaraj Rao on rti4empowerment@yahoogroups.com on Sun, May 24, 2009 at 2:38 AM

98215 88114

MPs' Expenses controversies in UK

Our press and media has been pre-occupied with with election related news. During the same period, there have been fascinating and dramatic developments in UK. Records obtained with the help of Freedom of Information law and other sources revealed massive misuse of public money by Members of Parliament. 

Daily Telegraph had deployed 10 journalist to probe into records, which revealed blatant misuse of public money by MPs. This is an ongoing political scandal following the disclosure of expenses of British Members of Parliament. It involves the disclosure of widespread alleged misuse of the permitted allowances and expenses claimed by Members of Parliament. There was an attempts by MPs to exempt themselves from Freedom of Information legislation. Ultimately information had to be revealed and was given extensive coverage in press and media. 

There is genuine concern among MPs that Parliament has never been held in lower regard by members of the public. Even MPs who have done nothing wrong are reported to be considering quitting as they are considered "crooks" by the public. 

There are several important lessons for India: 

(A) RTI /FOI law leads to effective public accountability.

(B) Beneficiaries of corrupt practices try to avoid transparency. Transparency is essential to prevent misuse of public money.

(C) Press and media can make good use of information revealed with the help of RTI/FOI laws. It is also their social responsability to educate the readers/audience.

Posted by Dhirendra Krishna on rti4empowerment@yahoogroups.com on 

Sun, May 24, 2009 at 1:26 PM