Info panel caused Rs86 cr loss to govt

The information commissioners in the country not only failed citizens in getting requisite information, they also caused a loss of around Rs86 crore to the Centre by not imposing penalties as stipulated under the Right To Information (RTI) Act, a study released on Thursday said.

Updated on: Jan 14, 2011, 24:14:16 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

The information commissioners in the country not only failed citizens in getting requisite information, they also caused a loss of around Rs86 crore to the Centre by not imposing penalties as stipulated under the Right To Information (RTI) Act, a study released on Thursday said.

The RTI Act empowers information commissioners to impose Rs 250 penalty for each day an information is delayed.

This was one of the major finding of a pan-India study of 76,813 orders passed by 87 information commissioners during 2009-10 around the country, except Uttar Pradesh. “It is a conservative figure as we did not consider seven more grounds under which penalties can be imposed,” said Magsasay award winner RTI activist Arvind Kejriwal, who heads Public Cause Research Foundation, which did the study.

The study also found that penalties were imposed only in 3.17 % of the total order, a marginal improvement from 2.4 % in 2008-09. As many as 26 information commissioners did not impose penalty even in a single case they heard.

Prime reason for information commissioners ensuring that people get minimum information was that majority of them were retired bureaucrats, trained to withhold information.

In Maharashtra, a retired bureaucrat Naveen Kumar, appointed as an information commissioner, remanded back over 90 % of appeals he received to the public information officers (PIOs), who had failed to provide information within the stipulated 30 days.

In Jharkhand, there were allegations of corruption against the information commissioners for not imposing penalty on the PIOs.

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

Catch every big hit, every wicket with Crickit, a one stop destination for Live Scores, Match Stats, Infographics & much more. Explore now!

Stay updated with all top Cities including, Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai and more across India. Stay informed on the latest happenings in World News along with Delhi Election 2025 and Delhi Election Result 2025 Live, New Delhi Election Result Live, Kalkaji Election Result Live at Hindustan Times.