Cost of pollution data under RTI: Rs 27.8 lakh

The Madhya Pradesh Pollution Control Board has slapped a bill of Rs 27.84 lakh on a Bhopal-based Right To Information (RTI) applicant for data on polluting industries.

Updated on: Sep 19, 2010, 01:13:21 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Madhya Pradesh Pollution Control Board has slapped a bill of Rs 27.84 lakh on a Bhopal-based Right To Information (RTI) applicant for data on polluting industries.

Ajay Dubey, who won the national RTI award in 2009 for his exposures using the law, had sought copies of reports in which the board found emissions from industries exceeded the limits under the Air and Water Acts.

Instead of providing the information itself, the board transferred the application to all its regional offices. The data sought was for the period from April 2009 to March 2010.

Dubey received the first reply from the Ujjan regional office this week, which said he would have to deposit R27,84,952 lakh to get information regarding 851 industries found to be polluting. “The money is on account of analysing the samples lifted from these industries,” said the Public Information Officer in his reply.

Of the total amount, Rs 14.40 lakh is for analysing water samples and the rest for analysing air quality monitoring reports of 284 industries. The only information provided was the list of industries found to be polluting under the law.

The transparency law states that the information available with the public authority has to be disclosed unless exempted. The watchdog, Central Information Commission, has repeatedly said the applicant has to pay only the fees and the photocopy charges and no money for diversion of government resources to obtain the information sought.

The reply has left the RTI activists aghast. “It is a clear violation of the RTI law,” said Magsasay award-winning RTI activist Arvind Kejriwal. “It shows the board wants to hide something.”

The money for the analysis already done cannot be sought from the applicant. The PIO, in his reply, has admitted that the entire information is available with the department.

Dr N.P. Shukla, the board’s chairman, said, “I cannot say whether the amount sought is correct or not,” he told HT. Dubey said he never asked for the analysis to be done. “It is available in the government records and the PIO should provided it as per the provisions of the law,” 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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