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| PDC officials fail to charge RTI fee | | Thousands of pages given free of cost | | Early Times Report
Srinagar, Feb 27: The office of Power Development Commissioner (PDC) failed to charge fees amounting to thousands of rupees from an RTI applicant. The officials could have charged the fees provided they had given information within 30 days , but their unnecessary delay caused loss to state exchequer.
Details available with Early Times reveal that an RTI application was filed on 11.06.2015 addressed to Development Commissioner Power. The application was forwarded to various PIOs on 18.06.2015. The information seeker had sought details about court cases/engagement of casual/seasonal need base labourers pending with Power Development Commissioner (PDC) office and those referred by Chief Engineer (CE/M&RE) from 2006 onwards. The RTI applicant namely Mehraj u din Wani a resident of Pandach Ganderbal sought information in terms of total number of Court cases with SWP Numbers and list of the case holders,Court orders and Present status of these cases.
Information seeker was provided voluminous information which runs into thousands of pages. The officials in-charge of giving information have not ensured that Government record is to be given under RTI after charging copying charges @ Rs. 2/page. These copying charges can only be sought within 30 days from the receipt of RTI application. As the application was not processed within 30 days, with the result the copying charges which would have been in thousands of rupees have been lapsed. The PDC thus caused loss to state exchequer.
SIC's order dated 21.1.2016 reads as :
"As the information was not provided to the appellant, he preferred First Appeal before Development Commissioner Power on 14.07.2015. The First appeal was addressed to Development Commissioner Power though he is not the First Appellate Authority (FAA). However, keeping in view the spirit of the Act, he was required to forward the appeal to the concerned FAA which has not been done. There were several officers who represented PIO as well as FAA, but they could not produce any evidence before the Commission that First Appeal was adjudicated by the FAA. Though various PIOs have provided information, the appellant states that information provided to him is not in accordance with the RTI application filed by him. The Commission has gone through the voluminous information provided to the information seeker. It has been seen that information seeker has sought specific information about court cases with regard to casual/seasonal/ need based labourers which has not been provided. Accordingly PIO Office of the Development Commissioner Power is directed to provide this information to the information seeker within 15 days from receipt of this order and submit a compliance report to the Commission in this regard"
"The State Information Commission (SIC) should have recovered the money from the PIO Power Commissioner''s office. It is his ignorance that public money is being wasted. We demand action against the erring officials " said Mushtaq. |
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