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CIC’s decisions :
Schools, aided or otherwise, are covered under RTI :
In one interesting case, the Central Information Commission,
vide its order dated 18-5-2007, had directed the Directorate of Education, GNCT
of Delhi to obtain u/s.2(f) of the Act, the minutes of the Managing Committee
(MC) meetings from March 2002 to March 2007 from the Purna Prajna Public School,
Vasant Kunj, New Delhi and provide a copy to the appellant, Shri D. K. Chopra.
Subsequently, the ap-pellant informed the Commission that the PIO had not
complied with the above decision and when asked about it, the PIO stated that he
had no legal authority to obtain the information from the school.
The PIO at the hearing in this adjunct matter reiterated that
under the Delhi Education Act, the documents which could be obtained are
specified under Annexure-II in which the document, namely, minutes of the
meeting of the Managing Committee of schools is not included. The Department of
Education was therefore unable to acquire the minutes of the Managing Committee
from the concerned school as directed by the Commission. Though an official of
the respondent is a member of the MC, the PIO has, however, no access to the
minutes of MC.
In the decision, the Information Commissioner noted :
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A major objective of the RTI Act is to ensure transparency and accountability in
functioning of the institutions, particularly the service providers that have
considerable interface with a larger section of people. The documents, in
question, contain such information that foretell about the health and vitality
of the schools which are responsible for preparing our children to lead the
nation. Moreover, the information asked for is an outcome of deliberations of
the major stakeholders — school authorities, teachers, representatives of PTA
and the Government of Delhi. The minutes of MCs are thus already in public
domain, as these are circulated among the members. How can it be treated as
confidential or secret ? Unfortunately, the Principal of the school and the PIO
have connived to withhold the minutes of the MCs for reasons that contravene
with the larger purpose of creating an information regime for good governance.
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All the aided or unaided schools are performing
governmental functions to promote high quality of relevant education. An
official of the GNCT of Delhi is nominated by the Directorate of Education as a
member of the Management Committee of all the schools. The nominated member of
the Directorate of Education is therefore the custodian of the minutes of the
MCs u/s.5(4) of the RTI Act. And, there is no reason why such minutes,
reflecting the aspects of governance of the school, should not be put in public
domain. The Government has the control on the functioning of the schools and,
therefore, it has access to the information asked for. And, so has a citizen.
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Not only the land allotted to private educational institutes is provided at
subsidised rates, but also the fees paid by the students/parents enjoy
income-tax concession. There is thus some element of indirect Government funding
in the activities of even private and un-aided schools. In view of this, the
respondent, which is represented through its officials on the Managing
Committee, is surely the custodian of the information asked for by the
appellant. The decisions of the MCs have significant bearing on the life and
career of the students as well as their parents/guardians and, therefore, there
is no reason why the minutes of the Managing Committee should not be disclosed
to the affected persons i.e., the citizens.
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The PIO’s contention that the minutes of the MCs are not included in Annexure-II
of the Delhi Education Act and, therefore, he cannot acquire them is not
acceptable, as S. 22 of the RTI Act, 2005 has an overriding effect on all such
provisions that come in the way of promotion of transparency in functioning of
the schools, the activities of which are governmental in nature. The PIO is
directed again to furnish the information at the earliest under intimation to
the Commission.
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In view of lackadaisical attitude of the concerned PIO and the principal of the
school towards the implementation of the RTI Act, the Commis-sion’s order dated
18-5-2007 has not been compiled with, which is unfortunate. The Director (Edu.),
Directorate of Education, GNCT of Delhi is therefore directed to initiate
appropriate action against the school, including cancellation/withdrawal of its
recognition, as the school has chosen to function in a manner which is not duly
transparent and is, thus, inconsistent with the ethos and purpose of the RTI
Act. An action taken report should be submitted to the Commission at the
earliest.
From the above decision, one can conclude that schools,
whether aided or otherwise, are covered under the RTI Act.
(Shri D. K. Chopra v. Directorate of Education, GNCT
of Delhi : Decision under F. No. CIC/MA/A/2007/00104 of 12-9-2007)
The RTI Act :
Chapter 4 of the Annual Report 2005-06 as published by the
Central Information Commission deals with overview of implementation of the RTI
Act, 2005.
It is a report u/s.25 of the RTI Act on the implementation of
the provisions of this Act during the year 2005-06 (for the period from
12-10-2005 to 31-3-2006).
The implementation report (IR) is made up of various charts and tables. It is interesting to note that in many aspects, the Ministry of Finance tops the chart, some noted as under:
Further, statistics show that out of 4770 requests received by the Ministry of Finance (which forms at least 20% of the total RTI requests in the year) they rejected 1748, which forms 51.6% of all the rejected applications in the year.
This disproportionately high ratio of rejection calls for introspection and training of the staff of public authorities under this Ministry in disposing of the RTI requests.
It seems that out of total 24436 RTI applications furnished in the year (as above) ended 31-3-2006, only 451 went for second appeal to the Central Information Commission (CIC). It disposed of 441 of them. CIC also received 252 complaints u/s. 18; it disposed of 241 of them as on 31-3-2006.
Other News
Mere existence of an investigation, no ground for refusal of information:
Recently, the Delhi HC strengthened the RTI law by interpreting its provisions. Justice S. Ravindra Bhat said: a person who has been accused of dowry demand by a woman or her parents is entitled to get information about the details of income-tax returns filed by the complainant.
One Bhagat Singh, who had been charged by his wife with demanding dowry, sought information about the complainant’s tax returns to prove that the latter spent money on the wedding from unknown sources or had concealed wealth. Any expenditure on marriage must be listed and the source of wealth accounted for.
It is apparent that the mere existence of an investigation process cannot be a ground for refusal of information. The authority withholding information must show satisfactory reasons as to why the release of such information would hamper the investigation process. Such reasons should be germane, and the opinion of the process being hampered should be reasonable and based on some material. Without this consideration, S. 8 and other such provisions would become the haven for dodging demands for information. Moreover, rights-based enactment is akin to a welfare measure and it should be open to liberal interpretation. Otherwise a social act becomes unsocial.
Editorial in DNA:
Given India’s notorious red-tapism, corruption and lack of official accountability, the importance of the Right to Information Act (RTI) cannot be overestimated. Since the RTI was implemented in October 2005, Indians have taken to it in a big way, sensing an opportunity to get information on matters critical to their local communities and to citizens in general.
The bigger problem is that the bureaucracy has still not fully come to terms with the full import of RTI, or if it has, then there have been attempts to ignore it. We have heard of all kinds of impediments, from the silly to the sinister, that are put in the way of the applicant. Then there are departments and ministries which find various excuses to stay out of the ambit of the RTI Act; in one recent case even the PMO was cagey about giving information on the disappearance of Subhas Chandra Bose. India has no law like in the US where archival material automatically comes into the public domain after 30 years. Most citizens will want information on things that touch their lives; but the general principle of openness should apply everywhere, and that is not happening.
Dial up for RTI :
The year 2008 may ring in Right to Information (RTI) on telephone as the Central Information Commission (CIC) has a proposal to open a call centre in Delhi for facilitation of RTI use.
In Bihar, a call centre has been in operation since january 2007. In case of information provided on telephone, the fee stipulated for the use of RTI is added to the telephone bill of the information seeker. .
The centre will also intensify the campaign to train and sensitise designated Public Information Officers on the RTI Act. Till now, only 10 percent of information officers and other government officials have been trained. The officers are being trained in Administrative Training Institutes in different states. These one-day to three-day courses have been devised by Yashada in Pune, Centre for Good Governance in Hyderabad and Institute of Secretarial Training and Management in Delhi.
The Chief Minister’s Relief Fund:
In this feature in February 2008, a small news item was given on this fund. Now the Chief Minister has conceded to get CM Relief Fund covered under the RTI Act. The disclosure obtained under the RTI application has shocked the citizens of the State.
The fund, which lists assisting people trapped in natural disasters as its sole objective, was registered with the Charity Commissioner in 1967. The RTI query has now revealed that a large part of the Rs.50 crore or thereabouts which the CM’s office received in donations between 2003 and 2005 (when first Sushilkumar Shinde and then Vilasrao Deshrnukh were at the helm) went to events conducted by institutions that were in no way related to calamities and disasters.
All details disclosed show blatant misuse of funds.
- RTI v. Courts and Legislative Bodies:
Right from inception of the RTIAct, there have been ongoing debates regarding powers of RTI Information Commissioners v. the powers of the Court Judges. Now conflicts have started between RTI Information Commissioners and the State Legislative Assembly. Taking serious note of the issue of notices to the Vidhan Sabha Principal Secretary by the UP Information Commission, the State Assembly resolved that any such summons will be considered a violation of the privileges of the House and necessary action will follow.
The decision of the House comes in the wake of the issuance of two notices by the Commission to the Principal Secretary R. P. Pandey on two petitions to the panel.
In both cases, the Secretary had pleaded that the House was not covered under the Act. On this, the applicants approached the State Information Commission, which in turn issued notices to Pandey. Meanwhile, both matters had been referred to the privileges committee, though one of the notices was later cancelled by the Commission.
- Mumbai gets first Information Commissioner:
Ramanand Tiwari is appointed as SIC stationed in Mumbai. It may be interesting to note that only 5% of SICs and CICs are non-bureaucrats, one of them is SIC for Pune division, Vijay Kuwalekar, who is a senior journalist.
Commercial banks cannot be compelled under the Right to Information (RTI) Act to divulge the operational details of their ATMs installed across cities, the Central Information Commission (CIC) has ruled. “Information pertaining to operation of ATMs is really a matter of commercial confidence. As a matter of fact, a lot of security is involved in such a procedure and such information cannot be given to any outsider,” CIC’s Information Commissioner Padma Balasubramanian held in a ruling on January 29.
According to information obtained under the RTI Act, more than 800 farmers committed suicide in the first six months of 2007.
The agrarian crisis has forced 607 farmers to commit suicide in Maharashtra, while 114 have ended lives in Andhra Pradesh. Seventy-three have killed themselves in Kamataka and 13 cases were reported from Kerala in the first half of the last year alone, the information revealed. This despite NDA-ruled States like Punjab and Gujarat having failed to furnish details about the number of farmer suicides to the Union Agriculture Department.
