BLOCK LEVEL INTERACTIVE WORKSHOP ON
RIGHT TO INFORMATION ACT, HELD AT
SOHELA BLOCK HEADQUARTERS, BARGARH ON 26th OCTOBER 2006
As per the instruction of Orissa Information Commission, Bhubaneswar the Sub-Collector Padampur decided to organize a series of Interactive Workshops on RTI Act at the level of each of the 6 Blocks involving the officials, PRI leaders, journalists, lawyers and NGOs with a view to provide the participants with an in-depth operational knowledge about the RTI Act and Orissa RTI Rules.
The first of the proposed series of workshops was held at Sohela Block Headquarters on 26th of October 06. The programme started around 11 AM in the Block auditorium with a note of welcome extended to the participants by Sri Sarat Chandra Sethi, Sub-Divisional Public Relations Officer-cum-Assistant Public Information Officer at Padampur. Sri Sethi also introduced the Sub-divisional Revenue Officer-cum-PIO at Padampur (Sri Prasanna Kumar Sarangi) who would act as the Moderator of the event and the Resource Person (Sri Chitta Behera, Advisor to Actionaid supported Orissa Right to Information Campaign www.orissarti.com), who would facilitate the discussions to be held on the occasion. Sri Sethi further welcomed in the Network Coordinator (Sri Fakir Charan Rout) of SMPU (Samuhik Marudi Pratikar Udyam) Padampur who has provided collaboration to the sub-divisional administration for organizing the interactive RTI workshops. The BDO Sohela Block Sri Paul Ekka and the Chairman of Sohela Panchayat Samiti Sri Govind Agarwal were also seated on the dais. A total of 65 participants attended the workshop, among whom were the PRI leaders, journalists and NGO activists besides the officers and staff from various offices in and around Sohela. The PIO-cum-Coopperative Extension Officer of Sohela Block Sri Umesh Ch. Nayak was also present among others.
The note of welcome was followed by the self-introduction by each of the participants. Then the proceedings of the workshop started with deliberation by Sri P.K.Sarangi, SRO-cum-PIO, Padampur who presented an overview of the salient provisions of RTI Act 05 and Orissa RTI Rules 05. First of all, he described the Act as a citizen-friendly legislation and expected the participants to grasp its provisions correctly so as to be able to apply it in their day-to-day life in a proper manner. As regards the purview of the Act, he told that it applied to all kinds of public authorities, from Panchayat to Parliament, from Sessions Court to Supreme Court and from the office of RI to Rastrapati Bhavan, except of course the list of 18 nos. of security and intelligence agencies of the Centre as mentioned under the Second Schedule of the Act, and 5 nos. of such agencies notified by the Government of Orissa (vide Notification No.PC-106/2005-29086/IPR dated 29th Oct 2005) which have been allowed conditional exemption from the purview of the Act. He added that offices like Block, PHC or Tahsil have no official secrets as such to safeguard, since they don’t deal with national security or surveillance matters. Rather the Section 22 makes it abundantly clear that no officer can any longer take the excuse of Official Secrets Act 1923 or any such instrument of law to withhold the information held by them from disclosure. Then Sri Sarangi speaking on the definition of information as provided under the Act observed that it included inter alia one’s right to inspect a file, ask for the sample or model of a structure or to procure the electronic medium like CD, Cassette or Floppy in which the concerned information might be stored. Dealing with the Section 4 of the Act, Sri Sarangi explained that every public authority should have made a proactive disclosure of 17 nos. of information concerning itself through different means including internet within 120 days of the enactment of the RTI law i.e. by 12th October 2005. As per Section 5, every public authority should have designated necessary number of officers from amongst its staff as PIO, APIO and First Appellate Authority, within 100 days of the commencement of the Act.
The Section 6 allows every citizen of the country to apply for information. To facilitate the implementation of this provision, the Orissa RTI Rules 2005 has prescribed Form-A, which every applicant for information should use for applying under the Act along with submission of an application fee of Rs.10/- through treasury challan or cash. It is to be noted that the applicant needn’t mention the designation he or she holds in an organization Government or private in the body of the application, since the Act has given power to the citizens as persons, but not to the organizations or designation-holders of any kind to apply under the Act. The concerned applicant has to provide the photocopy of Voter’s Identity Card or such other document as proof of his/her citizenship. As per Section 7(1), the PIO is duty bound to furnish the requested information within 30 days, failing which he may be penalized under Section 20 of the Act at the rate of Rs.250/- against everyday’s delay upto a maximum of Rs.25,000/- by the Information Commission. If, however, the PIO think that the requested information is exempt from disclosure on the grounds covered under Section 8 or 9, he/she is required to mention it in Form C (intimation of rejection) while rejecting the application for information. In the same Form, the PIO would also mention the particulars of first appellate authority, before whom the aggrieved applicant might prefer his/her first appeal within 30 days against the decision so taken by the PIO. The 1st appeal shall be disposed of within 30 to 45 days. If the aggrieved appellant is not satisfied with the decision of the 1st appellate authority, then he/she might prefer a second and final appeal within 90 days against the same before the Information Commission, whose decision shall be final and binding on all parties. Then Sri Sarangi finally expressed the hope that both the official and non-official participants of the workshop shall make use of the provisions of RTI Act in such a manner that the administration of such offices as Block, PHC and Tahsil or those dealing with agriculture, horticulture, veterinary, education and water resources etc., which as such have no official secrets to maintain is run in respect of all their functions and transactions with utmost transparency and accountability.
Then the Resource Person of the day Sri Chitta Behera opened his deliberation expressing his gratitude to the sub-divisional administration and SMPU Network Padampur for affording him the opportunity of talking to a congregation of officials and eminent citizens of Sohela Block on various nuances of RTI Act and Orissa Rules made thereunder. Taking the cue from the previous speaker’s remark that the RTI Act was a citizen-friendly law, Sri Behera observed that it was an administration-friendly law too. If we look at the statistics of the people in Orissa who have submitted application for getting information or used the forum of Information Commission for redressing their grievances so far, it would be found that most of them are serving as Government employees at present or retired ones. As a matter of fact, earlier to the enactment of RTI law, there existed no legal scope even for a Government employee to ask for any information from concerned authorities, relating to his own service, such as when shall a lingering departmental proceeding against him/her shall be disposed of, when shall the benefits like pension or provident fund finally reach him/her, why his/her promotion has been held up, when shall his/her pending salaries/allowances be disbursed and the like. Now that the RTI Act is in force, a Government servant too can apply for information, without any fear, before the appropriate authorities, who are bound by law to give a time-bound reply to these queries. Then peeping into the history of the evolution of the historic RTI law, the resource person observed that the widely prevailing notion of the country’s intelligentsia that the formulation of RTI law was a handiwork of civil society groups like Mrs. Aruna Roy’s MKSS Rajasthan was only a one-sided story. As a matter of fact, this very law at the stage of its final draft was given the vetting by a top bureaucrat of the country Sri A.N.Tiwari, the then Secretary Ministry of Personnel, Pension and Public Grievances, Govt. of India, who after his retirement in Dec 2005 has since been serving as a Central Information Commissioner at Delhi. In view of such facts, no Government servant should ever harbour any apprehension that the RTI law is meant only to harass them. The truth is that this law is as much administration-friendly as citizen-friendly.
Sri Behera then observed that in addition to the application mode mentioned under Section 6, the Act provides for citizen’s right to access all sorts of information which need to be proactively disclosed by every public authority under Section 4. Not only that. As per Section 4(2) of the Act, the suo motu disclosure of 17 categories of information to be effected through a variety of media accessible to the public at large, should be given top priority by every public authority, so that a common citizen won’t have to undergo the burden of addressing any written application accompanied by the necessary fees and of waiting for a maximum period of 30 days, just to get a piece of information, as required under Section 6 of the Act. The application mode has another disadvantage, and that too for the PIO and appellate authority of the concerned office, since the applicant in the event of denial of information by the PIO and upholding of the latter’s action by the appellate authority, can lodge an appeal before Suchana Commission against both. And as already mentioned by the previous speaker, the errant PIO can be penalized for his/her acts of omission and commission to the extent of Rs.25,000/-. Again, as per Section 20(2) of the Act, the Commission too can recommend disciplinary action against the PIO, which might amount to even suspension and dismissal from service. Moreover, as per Section 19(8b), the Commission may direct the concerned public authority to compensate for the loss or detriment that a citizen might have suffered in course of his/her seeking the information under the Act. Not only that. In any appeal proceedings, the onus of proof would lie on the PIO who denied the information (vide Sections 19-5 and 20-1). Keeping in view such possible hassles and problems involved in the application mode under Section 6 for both citizen and PIO, the Act has accorded priority to the suo motu mode as prescribed under Section 4. Corroborating this contention, Sri Behera drew the attention of the participants to the para-3 of the Minutes of the Proceedings of the Implementation Core Committee Meeting held on 22 Aug. 05 under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary Orissa, which, as read out by PIO Sohela, noted inter alia, “According to the provisions of Section 4 of the RTI Act, every public authority is required to disclose information voluntarily in 17 points by 12.10.2005. Steps should be taken to go for voluntary disclosure of information to the maximum extent so that the strength of application seeking information will be substantially reduced.”
Sri Behera then said, ‘Now let us take a quick stock of how far this provision has been carried out by the public authorities by now’? Specifically speaking, the Point XVI under Section 4(1b) of the Act says that the particulars of PIO/APIOs and Appellate Officers appointed by every public authority under the Act should be proactively disclosed. In pursuit thereof the ‘Operational Guidelines’ (vide No.PC-100/2005-29062/IPR dated 28th October 2005) issued by the Chief Secretary Orissa had instructed at para-15 (b) “The following information will be prominently displayed in front of the office of PIO at various levels of different administrative units under control of each Department. – (i ) Name and Designation of PIO, (ii) Name and Designation of Appellate Authority”. Have the concerned offices acted accordingly?, asked Sri Behera. At this stage Sri Umesh Ch.Nayak, PIO of Sohela Block admitted the inadvertent lapse by his office in this respect and assured to comply with the provision as instructed, at the earliest.
Pointing out certain other salient disclosures to be made under Section 4(1b) of the Act Sri Behera said, one such provision (Item no. xv) related to the facilities to be provided by a public authority for the information seeking citizens such as a reading room or a library or adequate sitting space along with indispensable conveniences like toilet, drinking water and fans etc., where the citizen-visitors can comfortably sit, consult and inspect the records as and when necessary, without causing any disturbance to the routine activities of the concerned office. It ought to be remembered that as per the Explanation to Section 4 of the Act, a citizen or a group of citizens have the right to inspect a public office in regard to any of the 17 items covered under Section 4(1b). Next, the items (vii) and (viii) enjoin upon each public authority to disclose the detail modalities, followed by them in taking a decision in which public interest is involved, making disposal of public grievances and moreover eliciting of public participation in the decision-making process. The Section 4(1 c and d) also provide for obligations of similar nature to be followed by each public authority including those who take quasi-judicial decisions.
The moot question however arises, is there a standard format or procedure through which the public authorities should publicise the proactive disclosures under Section 4(1b)? Yes, said Sri Behera, and he showed the copy of the ‘Template for Information Hand-book under Section 4 of RTI Act’ prepared by GOI’s nodal agency Department of Personnel and Training, which is also currently available on Govt of Orissa’s RTI website. If the template is scrupulously followed by the public authorities in respect of their proactive disclosures under Section 4 of the Act, then it would be found that there is no information available with a public authority, which can’t be disseminated through Section 4.
The next question arises, should a citizen have to apply in Form A for availing the information as publishable under Section 4(1b)? No, said Sri Behera, because firstly, the qualifying note mentioned below the title of Form-A says ‘An application for Information under Section 6(1) of the Act’. This Form is therefore not applicable to somebody who seeks information under Section 4 of the Act. Secondly, Section 4(2) obligates each public authority to provide such information in a suo motu manner, which in other words means that the information under Section 4 shall be made available by the public authorities without anybody having to formally apply for it.
Then the question arises, should an information seeker have to wait for a maximum of 30 days to receive the information covered under Section 4? No, said Sri Behera, because, unlike the Section 7(1) which talks of the time-limit of maximum 30 days within which the requested information shall be provided in response to the application made under Section 6(1), the opening sentence of the Section 4(1b) mandates that all the information falling under 17 categories should have been published within 120 days of the enactment of RTI law i.e. by 12th of October 2005, and its closing sentence says that the said categories of information shall get periodically updated. The Explanation to Section 4 says that such information can be accessed by the public through various means including ‘inspection of public offices’. Again, the Rule 2(2) of Orissa RTI (Amendment) Rules 2006 in order to facilitate the citizens’ right to inspect such suo motu information, says, “each public authority shall maintain a Register for day-to-day record of the members of public who visit its office in connection with accessing or inspecting suo motu information proactively disclosed by the said authority under Section 4 of the Act.” Thus going by both RTI Act and Orissa Rules made thereunder, it should be held beyond any shade of doubt that a citizen desirous of seeking information under Section 4 of the Act needn’t have to apply in Form A nor have to wait for a maximum of 30 days to access the same. In a nutshell, a citizen is entitled to get any information covered under Section 4 instantly and without having to make any formal application.
Then, the most critical question arises, should an information seeker have to pay any fees towards the cost of information covered under Section 4(1b)? Sri Behera said, strictly speaking, no public authority at State or Central level can charge any fee against the supply of information under Section 4, since neither the State nor the Centre has prescribed any fee against the same. To corroborate his point, Sri Behera asked the PIO Sohela Block to read out the Section 27(2) of the Act which has inter alia asked the ‘appropriate Governments’ (Centre or State, as the case may be) to prescribe 4 kinds of fees, such as under, [a] Section 4-4 (fee for suo motu information), [b] Section 6-1 (application fee), and [c ] Section 7-1 (fee towards the cost of information provided in response to an application made under under 6-1 and Section 7-5 (fee towards the cost of electronic medium). But the Central RTI (fees and cost) Rules 2005 has prescribed fees covered only under [b] and [c] of Section 27(2) leaving out the fees chargeable under [a], which stands for the fees chargeable against the suo motu information covered under Section 4-4. Similarly, Orissa RTI Rules 2005 in its Rule 2(1c) has prescribed only 3 of the 4 fees and has omitted the fee chargeable under Section 4-4 from the purview of prescription altogether. And further, like the Rule 2 (c ) of the above mentioned Central Rules, the Orissa Rule 2(2) says that whatever has been omitted from prescription under the State Rules, shall be dealt with as per the provisions made under the parent Act. Now let us see, what the parent Act says on this matter? The RTI Act 05 (vide Section 4-4) says clearly that all the information covered under Section 4(1b) shall be made available ‘free or at such cost of the medium or the print cost price as may be prescribed’. Since such cost has not been prescribed, it can’t be charged either by any public authority while furnishing the suo motu information under Section 4. Further, to clear the confusion once and for all, one should look closely at the qualifying note mentioned within a bracket in the Orissa Schedule of Fees and Costs, which forms an integral part of the Orissa RTI Rules. The said note says ‘(See Rules 4 and 7)’. The Rule 4 refers to the application fee to be paid along with an application made under Section 6(1), and Rule 7 refers to the appeal fees to be paid by an appellant while making 1st or 2nd appeal under Section 19 of the Act. Thus the various fees mentioned under the Orissa Schedule are not applicable to somebody who seeks information under Section 4 or makes a complaint under Section 18 of the RTI Act. In sum, a citizen seeking information under Section 4 is entitled to receive it instantly, and without having to submit any application or fees whatsoever.
However Sri Behera added, while the right of a citizen to access information in any shape under Section 4 free of cost from the respective public authorities is a fully legitimate right sanctified by law and relevant rules, the concerned officer may negotiate with the requesting citizen to collect just the print or medium cost of the information from him/her, since in absence of the notified fee under Section 4(4), the concerned officer can’t pay for the same from his/her own pocket. He further clarified that while the PIO is responsible for disposal of applications under Section 6, the head of each public authority shall remain responsible for disposal of all matters covered under Section 4.
Then Sri Behera observed that just like two modes of accessing information, the Act provides for two modes of appeal/complaint to be lodged by the aggrieved citizen before the appellate authorities including the Information Commission. As already mentioned, the Section 19 provides for two-stage appeal process, first before the first appellate authority located in the concerned public authority itself (Section 19-1), and second, before the Information Commission (Section 19-3), and as per the existing Orissa RTI Rules, an appellant has to use Form-D and Form-E respectively to make the 1st and 2nd appeals attaching court fee stamps worth Rs.20/- and Rs.25/-. But as per Section 18(1), a Complaint can directly be made before the Commission, for which no format or fees are required. The Orissa Information Commission (Appeal Procedure) Rules 2006 (vide Rule 6) mentions 5 points, which should be addressed to in a Complaint under Section 18 as lodged by an aggrieved citizen. However, the Section 5(2) says that it is the responsibility of the Assistant PIO to forward the appeal/complaint of the aggrieved citizen to the departmental appellate authority or to the Information Commission, as the case may be. Further the Section 18(1) says that if a PIO refuses to forward such complaint/appeal to the appropriate appellate authorities, then a direct complaint against him/her can be lodged by the aggrieved citizen quoting such refusal as an additional ground of the complaint so made. As a matter of fact, if the PIOs and APIOs of every office follow this salutary provision of forwarding the complaints/appeals of the aggrieved citizens to the concerned appellate bodies themselves in practice, then much of the problem arising in the aftermath from the fabricated and exaggerated complaints often resorted to by the malcontented applicants and consequent overload of work on appellate bodies at different levels won’t arise at all.
Interaction with participants:
Following the deliberations by the moderator and resource person, the house was open for a question-answer session.
Question 1 by Sri Binod Behera, a Sarpanch:
Considering the present trend where we find hundreds and thousands of cases keep dragging on for several years for want of disposal by our courts, how do you expect that the citizens making complaints/appeals under RTI Act shall be disposed of in time?
Answer by Resource Person:
Keeping in view the factor of inordinate delay in disposal of cases by the existing courts, the RTI Act has provided for a separate machinery of adjudication of all RTI related cases in the form of Information Commissions both at Central and State levels, whose exclusive job is to receive and dispose of the RTI related complaints/appeals. Depending upon the increasing workload, the number of Commissioners to be appointed can be increased upto a group of 10 in addition to the Chief Commissioner at Central or State level. So it is expected that the complaints/appeals made under RTI Act shall receive focused attention and be thereby disposed of quickly and timely to the satisfaction of the appellants/complainants.
Question 2 by Sri Govind Agarwal, Chairman of Sohela Block:
The RTI Act like so many laws made in the past, sounds great and promising. But it is the practice of bureaucratism at every level, that atrophies every such progressive and pro-people law. We need to know, ‘Is there a single instance where an officer has been penalized for dereliction in his/her duty to provide information as per RTI Act’?
Answer by Resource Person:
Yes. There have been a few cases when the PIOs have been penalized by the Central Information Commission. For instance, a few days back, the Times of India reported that the Registrar of BHU was fined Rs.25,000/- for having willfully denied information concerning an enquiry report to the applicant.
But not fully satisfied with this answer, the Chairman intervened again, just to know if any officer has been penalized in Orissa for such reasons.
Answer by SRO-cum-PIO, Padampur Sub-division:
Though there is no case of penalty as such till date against any officer of Government of Orissa, but there were some occasions where the aggrieved citizens have got justice thanks to intervention by the State Information Commission and under the pressure of RTI law. For instance, a widow Mrs. Kokila Bewa, wife of Late Sankar Nayak, who had died in 1991 while serving as a sweeper in Bhubaneswar Muncipal Corportaion was not given the pension and provident admissible on account of her husband’s death, despite repeated visit by her to the Corporation for umpteen times. When she approached the State Information Commission through a second appeal, the Commission ordered the Corporation to pay up all pending dues amounting to a total of Rs. 87,911/- to Mrs.Bewa within 7 days of the receipt of the order.
A case from Padampur village in Bargarh district would be more relevant to quote here. Sri Basudev Panigrahi who retired as a primary school teacher on 31st Dec. 2000 had not received his Gratuity Provident Fund till June 2006 despite several visits made by him to the office of Treasury Controller, Bhubaneswar. His son Sushant. a law graduate accompanied by some RTI activists met the concerned officer and forewarned him to file an RTI application around the said grievance. Even before the application was actually filed, the pending dues of his father which amounted to Rs.1,07, 687/- were cleared.
Talk by Sri Fakir Charan Rout of SMPU, Padampur
After the interaction with the participants came to an end, Sri Fakir Charan Rout, Network Coordinator of Samuhik Marudi Pratikar Udyam (SMPU) Padampur gave a brief talk on what prompted their network to extend collaboration to the Padampur sub-divisional administration in the matter of organizing the Block-level interactive workshops on RTI, the first of which was being held at Sohela Block on the very day. He told that SMPU has over the years been campaigning for mitigating the problems and issues created by what they describe as ‘a system’s failure drought’ in Padampur area. The chief objective of the ongoing campaign is to enable the people, especially the marginalized sections to avail the various entitlements admissible to them under different Government schemes. It was soon realized by the network that the newly enforced RTI Act would serve as a powerful tool in the hands of such people to ensure a timely delivery of various entitlements due to them, be it BPL rice, Patta for landless tribal or Indira Awas for a homeless poor from the local administration. That is why, SMPU network has joined hands with the sub-divisional administration at Padampur for popularizing and enforcing RTI Act among both officials and public at large, concluded Sri Rout.
Vote of Thanks by APIO-cum-SPRO, Padampur:
Sri Sarat Charan Sethi, APIO-cum-SPRO, Padampur offered a warm thankfulness on behalf of both Sub-divisional and Block administration to the Resource person, PIO-cum-SRO Padampur and Chairman Sohela Block for having contributed their valuable share of knowledge and information in the deliberations of the one-day Interactive Workshop on RTI. He expressed his gratitude to the officers and staff of various offices including the Principal of Sohela College for having keenly followed the proceedings. Above all, very cordial thanks were expressed to the PRI leaders, NGO activists, journalists, lawyers and eminent citizens of the Sohela Block area for attending the Workshop and thereby making it a success. At last, he hoped that the lessons imparted through this Workshop would be properly internalized by all the participants for translating the RTI law into a tangible reality across the areas under Sohela Block in Bargarh district.
Following the vote of thanks, the workshop came to an end around 2.30 PM and all the participants dispersed for mid-day lunch which was hosted by BDO, Sohela in the Block premises itself.
Minutes prepared by:
Sarat Kumar Sethi, Fakir Charan Rout
Sub-divisional Public Relations Officer- Network Coordinator, SMPU
Cum-Asst. PIO, Padampur Padampur