Rs 25,000 fine for refusing info, only Rs 5,000 for denying food

The UPA’s new game-changer, the food security bill, provides for lesser penalty for errant officials than the watershed Right To Information Act and a tedious process for booking them. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jul 15, 2013, 24:07:08 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The UPA’s new game-changer, the food security bill, provides for lesser penalty for errant officials than the watershed Right To Information Act and a tedious process for booking them.

The RTI Act had provided for a maximum penalty of Rs 25,000 against any official denying information to an applicant. The government has adopted a minimal approach by prescribing just Rs 5,000 penalty for officials, who fail to provide subsidised food to the beneficiaries in the food security law.

The food security law also provides for ample protection to the officials on the ground that they can be penalised after a due process is followed. That means the officials are heard and penalty is invoked only after an inquiry is conducted.

“Everyone knows that it takes years to complete an inquiry in a government system. Till then a poor person will have to suffer,” an activist of the Right To Food campaign said.

The Ordinance through which the law was recently promulgated has come out with clear provisions on protection of officials with little to ensure that people get the food supply on time. As per the process provided in the law, redressal of a person’s complaints will take several months.

The law also gives powers to food ministry officials to suspend any provision of the law if they think it is not implementable after two years, another provision aimed to protect the officials.

Government officials fear that the beneficiaries or the activists can take them to the court if certain provisions of the law are not implemented because of “harsh ground realities”. They also felt that having such a power will empower them to strengthen the law in coming years.

Amid all this, the law also tries to ensure transparency and accountability.

Taking a cue from the Mahatma Gandhi NREGA Act, the food security law provides for social audits by reputed organisations on how the food scheme is running. The social audits are conducted by NGOs based on information sought under RTI Act.

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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