Even nine years after enactment of the Right to Information Act,
officials have been found to be rejecting applications with fee drawn in favour
of ‘Accounts Officer’
as mandated by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT).
Taking a stern view against the practice, the Central
Information Commission recently issued a show-cause notice to the Delhi
Government for rejecting an RTI application on the grounds it was drawn in favour of
“Accounts Officer” and not in favour of “Executive Engineer” as per their
internal rules.
This is
not the only case where application has been rejected. In a number of cases,
public authorities like Army and Indian Air Force demand fee drawn as per their
rules and do not follow the DoPT norms.
The
application sought details of MPLAD funds and their expenses during the last
five years on flood control measures. It was returned by the Irrigation
Department claiming that name of the payee was wrong on the fee submitted by
the applicant.
“The
Commission directs Rajesh Singh, Executive Engineer: Civil Division:IV to show
cause as to why penalty u/s 20 should not be imposed upon him for not accepting
the IPO in the name of the Accounts Officer despite clear instructions from
DoPT.
“He is
directed to submit his response so as to reach the Commission within three
weeks of receipt of this order,” Information Commissioner Sridhar Acharyulu
said.
If the
officer fails to explain the reason for rejecting the application, the
Commission may penalise him at the rate of Rs 250 per day from the day the
application was filed subject to a maximum penalty of Rs 25,000.
He also
directed the PIO to ensure that while responding to the RTI application, the PIO
should ensure that reference date is mentioned so that appellants do not find
it difficult to link it to their RTI application.
“Department
of Personnel and Training (DoPT) has repeatedly reminded public authorities to
accept all payments under RTI Act made in ‘Accounts Officer’. But difficulties
are being faced by RTI petitioners because of public authorities not complying
with DoPT circulars,” RTI applicant Subhash Agrawal said.
