Info panel wants VIP gifts unwrapped

The Govt has been asked to make public the information on gifts received by the president, vice-president, PM and other senior government figures, judges of the SC and high courts, and three chiefs of the armed forces during foreign visits, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jan 21, 2009, 23:17:20 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The government has been asked to make public the information on gifts received by the president, vice-president, prime minister and other senior government figures, judges of the Supreme Court and high courts, and three chiefs of the armed forces during foreign visits.

The Central Information Commission on Wednesday asked the Ministry of External Affairs to also state if the gifts received, since 2004, by those on its protocol list were deposited with the government or not.

Information commissioner Annapurna Dixit has given the ministry's principal information officer Pratap Singh 20 days to provide information.

In October last, Subhash Chandra Aggarwal, a Delhi-based Right To Information activist, had asked the cabinet secretariat for details of the gifts received by the president, vice-president, speaker, all Union ministers, governors, HC and SC judges and chiefs of armed forces. He had also sought details of the gifts that had not been deposited with the government.

But, Singh said the information couldn't be provided as it was not readily available. "Also collection and compilation of the information desired needs fresh efforts …, a process which will disproportionately divert the resources of the public authority," he said.

Rules allow the receiver to keep a gift worth less than Rs 5,000. For a more expensive item, the dignitary has to pay up the difference to keep it. A dignitary can keep only one gift of choice received during a foreign visit.

Unlike India, countries such as the US and the UK require public servants to declare the gift received during official tours. In the US, a gift worth more than $100 has to be declared.

After listening to both the sides, Dixit said, "The commission directs the principal information officer to provide information against all categories of political rulers and others."

The commission also asked the ministry to make an assessment of the gifts received, and provide information with the list of the protocol order within 20 days.

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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