With Montek and Nair on its board, PHFI declared public authority

Having planning commission deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia and former Principal Secretary to Prime Minister TKA Nair on board has resulted in Public Health Foundation of India being declared a public authority under Right To Information Act on Wednesday.

Updated on: Feb 16, 2012, 17:45:52 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Having planning commission deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia and former Principal Secretary to Prime Minister TKA Nair on board has resulted in Public Health Foundation of India being declared a public authority under Right To Information Act on Wednesday.

It is first organization set up under Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode to be declared as a public authority. The plan panel had earlier rejected the Central Information Commission's (CIC) demand to cover PPP projects under the RTI Act saying the commission should take a view on individual case basis.

Now, the commission has said the government should incorporate a specific provision in every PPP agreement to make the project accountable to people through RTI.

The observation was part of the CIC decision overruling the foundation's claims that it was not "owned" by an appropriate government and said that the public servants on its board were in their "private capacity" and not because they represented the government.

The foundation was set up under a PPP agreement with the government.

The PHFI board has 30 members of which five --- Ahluwalia, PK Pradhan, health secretary, VM Katoch, director general of Indian Council of Medical Research, Nair and R K Srivastava, director general health services --- are public servants.

Information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi described the PHFI's argument of they being in their private capacity as "untenable" and said it was difficult to assume that senior public servants on the board in their private capacity. "The Commission can assume that such public servants must be acting on behalf of the government…any other conclusion would be an improper slur on their integrity," the order read.

The commission was hearing an appeal filed by Mumbai based Krishan Lal, who had sought details about constitution of the foundation and its functioning. The foundation rejected his application stating that it was not a public authority under the RTI Act as it was an "autonomous" organisation.

But, the commission found out that the government has given Rs 65 crore, one-third of the initial seed capital, for kick-starting PHFI and rest from Melinda and Bill Gates foundation and other high net worth individuals.

Once set up, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Gujarat governments gave it land free of cost to set up institutions. Delhi government spent Rs 13.82 crore to acquire land in Khanjhawla for setting up of Indian Institute of Public Health.

The officials were nominated to ensure that the decisions taken by the foundation are in consonance with the objectives for which the organization was set up. "PHFI refusal to accept its coverage by the RTI Act seems at variance with this," the order read.

As the foundation has placed most of the information on its website, the CIC gave 30 days to PHFI to comply with the provisions of the RTI Act. The foundation will have to pay compensation of Rs 3,000 to Lal for loss and detriment suffered by him in pursuing his complaint with the commission.

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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