New info commissioner acts tough, keeps fining defaulting officers

Here is some good news for RTI activists who plead with the information commissioner to be strict with defaulting public information officers (PIOs). Chief information commissioner Vilas Patil, who started his hearings from November 11, has already fined Rs1.20 lakh and asked for a departmental enquiry to be initiated against some such officers who default in giving out information. 

Patil who was earlier the information commissioner of Nagpur took oath of office here in October. Though he said his priority was reducing pendency, in his earlier job too he had fined more PIOs as compared to any other commissioner.  

Activists often said that since PIOs made light of the Act, a large number of appeals came to the commission. This, in fact, was the result of lack of fining, they claimed.  

Until December 24, from the 270 second appeal hearings held by Patil, he pulled up 50 PIOs. At least 8% of 270 officers has either been fined or asked why fine should not be imposed on them. Directives for disciplinary action were given to eight of them. Most of the penatly was against officers of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).     

The maximum fine imposed by the commissioner was of Rs10,000 and the maximum compensation provided to an applicant was Rs10,000. 

“Fining officers will make functioning more systematic. These fines need to be included in the annual confidential report of the officers. That would hinder the promotion of the officers. The directives that are given should be marked to the head of the public authority so that he knows the lacunae in the functioning,” said Bhaskar Prabhu, an RTI activist.