Loss to State exchequer

Dr Raja Muzaffar Bhat
Section 7 of Jammu & Kashmir Right to Information Act 2009 (JK RTI Act 2009) and even Central RTI Act 2005 discusses in detail the disposal of request. I am focused on  J&K RTI Act 2009 because the residents of Jammu & Kashmir usually  seek information under this act from various public authorities. Section 7 of J&K RTI Act 2009 has 9 sub-sections and while going through all these sub sections we will get a clear picture about the whole process of disposal of RTI request. Section 7 (1) of J&K RTI Act 2009 says that the designated Public Information Officer (PIO) after receiving an application under Right to Information Act (RTI) shall dispose the same as expeditiously as possible , and in any case within 30 days of the receipt of the request, either provide the information on payment of such fee as may be prescribed or reject the request for any of the reasons specified in Sections 8 and 9 of the Act. Having  filed more than 1000 RTI applications before  State and Central Government organizations from the last 10 years , I have hardly come across a single case wherein the designated PIO provided me information in less than 30 days. Same is the case with other RTI applicants of State as well.
Even if the information consists of only one page document , the officer in-charge (PIO) has a habit of dispatching  it to the information seeker (RTI applicant) only after completion of 25 to 30 days. In many cases the information is not provided at all. Providing one page information within 30 days makes no sense. Information seekers never carefully go through RTI act as they  believe that they can  get the information under RTI Act within 30 days time period only. This is not at all correct because the RTI act clearly says information be provided as expeditiously as possible and after this the 30 days time period is mentioned in the RTI law (see section 7 of RTI Act).
Loss to State exchequer:
J&K RTI Act 2009 also says that if the information is not provided within a time frame of 30 days no fees (Xerox charges etc) shall be collected from the information seeker (see Section 7 (6) of J&K RTI Act 2009). This clause is present in Central RTI Act 2005 as well. Under J&K RTI Rules 2012 an applicant has to pay Rs 10 as RTI application fees and Rs 2/- per page as photocopying (Xerox) fees. If for example an RTI applicant wants 5000 pages of information from Power Development Department (PDD) and the Executive Engineer of a particular electric division (PIO) fails to provide the same within 30 days , the PIO (Executive Engineer) has to deliver this huge information free of cost to information seeker after the RTI applicant  files 1st appeal  or even  2nd appeal before the State Information Commission (SIC). The question arises who shall pay Rs 10,000 (Xerox fees for 5000 pages) ?  We haven’t seen even a single officer paying this money out of his own pocket. The officers instead get the photocopies done at the cost of public money which is directly causing a loss to state exchequer.
CIC’s historic order :
Recently the State Chief Information Commission (CIC) G R Sufi issued a historic order in this regard. The PIO of Directorate of Health Jammu had failed to provide information to an RTI applicant for months together. The information consisted of 118 pages and while issuing the order the CIC not only issued a penalty show cause notice against the PIO but even asked him to pay Rs 236 towards Government. The order issued by CIC reads as “Information was voluminous and consisted of 118 leaves thereby causing a monetary loss of Rs.236/- to the Government. This loss could have been avoided had the PIO acted in time and as per provisions of the RTI Act. Therefore, Director Health Services, Jammu is directed to look into this and see how he can recover the above said amount from the then PIO Dr. Gurjeet Singh and deposit the same in government account”
Conclusion :
I am hopeful that Government officers especially the Public Information Officers (PIO’s) go through all the provisions of RTI Act. By not providing the information under RTI Act to information seekers well in time , the PIO’s are not only violating the provisions of this law but they are also causing loss to state exchequer. Authorities must keep this important aspect in mind and make it sure that PIO’s are fully trained about various provisions of RTI Act .
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