Assets on Web: RTI officers say no

Information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi’s move to put his asset details in the public domain hasn’t found favour with his colleagues, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Dec 22, 2008, 24:06:47 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi’s move to put his asset details in the public domain hasn’t found favour with his colleagues.

In an apparent rejection of Gandhi’s proposal, the Central Information Commissioner has decided not to put his asset statement on the commission’s website, for now.

Gandhi had in November submitted details of his assets, worth Rs 5.4 crore, to the Central Information Commissioner and had asked it be put on the commission’s website. “I’ve requested CIC Wajahat Habibullah to post the list of assets of all information commissioners on the website,” Gandhi had told HT.

The Central Information Commission, where majority of members are retired bureaucrats, however, opted for a longer route to decide the matter. “We’ve to take into account the procedure for submission of declaration of property by other such commissions before taking a final decision,” Habibullah told HT.

The rules don’t require members of commissions set up by the Centre to declare assets.

Gandhi’s proposal was discussed at a recent meeting, but most members weren’t in favour of declaring assets on the website.”There wasn’t much opposition to declaration of assets. But, what the commissioners didn’t like was providing the information on the website,” said a commission official, who didn’t want to be named.

Magsaysay award winner and RTI activist Arvind Kejriwal termed the move as a lost opportunity. “If the assets’ statements would have been put on the website, it would have put pressure on other government departments to do the same,” he said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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