Central body to have overriding powers under proposed law

The draft on right to service and grievance (RTSG) law approved by the council of ministers this week would give the central body powers to book erring babus under the IPC and have jurisdictional supremacy over similar bodies to be set up at the state level, Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Mar 9, 2013, 22:59:03 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The draft on right to service and grievance (RTSG) law approved by the council of ministers this week would give the central body powers to book erring babus under the IPC and have jurisdictional supremacy over similar bodies to be set up at the state level.

No jurisdictional link between state and the Central Information Commission (CIC) and no penal powers in the hands of information commissions had been the biggest drawback of the Right To Information Act.

The information law allows appeal against a decision of a commission only in a high court. A person aggrieved by the decision of the state information commission cannot approach the CIC.

But this would not be the case under the grievance redressal bill, which is likely to be introduced in the budget session of Parliament.

The draft bill says that every order made by the Central Public Grievance Redressal Commission (CPGRC) will have to be enforced by the state redressal commission.

It will allow people to file a complaint against the state commission within 30 days of the decision. The Central Commission would hear the appeals related to states if the state body fails to provide relief in a time-bound manner. The draft bill also aims to provide CPGRC judicial powers.

Nikhil Dey of National Campaign for People’s Right To Information says such powers would strengthen the Central Commission but may not work in India where 64% of the population live in villages. “Unless there is a strong grievance redressal mechanism at block or district level the bill may achieve its objectives.”

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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