Information panel chief gets taste of RTI

The CIC has to deal with a legal notice, a demand for constituting sexual harassment committee and an appeal against it for denial of information, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jul 27, 2008, 23:16:37 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Right to Information Act is giving some worrying moments to the Central Information Commission (CIC), the body entrusted with the job to ensure implementation of the law. The CIC has to deal with a legal notice, a demand for constituting sexual harassment committee and an appeal against it for denial of information. All this is based on the information obtained through RTI applications.

A former consultant with CIC, P Roychaudhari, has issued a legal notice to the commission on basis of a reply of the Railways to his RTI application, stating that he cannot represent the ministry in CIC because of objections raised by an Information Commissioner. He has sent the legal notice stating that the commission has tarnished his image by telling Railways that he cannot represent the ministry in CIC and has sought an apology.

In another case, an Indian Foreign Service official, Gloria Kumar, has asked CIC to set up a sexual harassment committee after the commission replied to her RTI application absolving an Information Commissioner of the charges of sexual harassment levelled by her.

The commission has absolved the commissioner of the charges on basis of his reply to the charge, the RTI reply submitted to Kumar said. Now, she has asked the commission to constitute a sexual harassment committee to inquire into her charges.

Earlier this week, the CIC allowed an appeal against its Principal Information Officer for denial of information. Sanjeev Kumar said the commission failed to provide him information sought regarding the its inspection of the office of Registrar Cooperative Societies, Delhi. The CIC had directed additional registrar L.C. Singhi to conduct an inspection about two years ago after the registrar cooperative societies failed to provide information sought by Kumar. However, Kumar failed to get the satisfactory reply and therefore, filed an appeal to Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah.

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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