Sometimes one wonders what happens to the orders of central or state information commissioners (SICs) which are appropriate under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, but are ignored by varied public authorities, including law enforcement agencies. One such case pertains to an SIC directive of the Nagpur division to two public authorities—the district government pleader’s office and the city survey office, both of Nagpur, which have disregarded the orders.
This case relates to a dispute about private property. One of the property-holders, RTI applicant Jagannath Jog, filed an RTI application to the city survey office-1 at Nagpur seeking legal opinion on his property documents, the copies of which he submitted with the RTI application. The public information officer (PIO), in turn, forwarded it along with the documents to the district government pleader’s office seeking a legal opinion, as it seemed a complicated issue. The district government pleader’s office gave a legal opinion based on documents that were not submitted by Mr Jog, the RTI applicant.
Outraged and finding something suspicious about it, Mr Jog filed an appeal to the first appellate authority (FAA) of the district government pleader’s office requesting copies of documents that were referred to while giving the legal opinion, on the basis of which he gave his legal opinion. The FAA claimed confidentiality regarding disseminating of the documents, citing certain clauses of the Advocate Act, and Bar Council Rules, and stated that it is privileged information, by referring to an old ruling that the advocate general cannot be disclosed.
Worse! Not only did the FAA cite confidentiality in denying him the information, but he also threatened Mr Jog if, in the future, he filed such RTI applications and also accused him of harassing public authorities.
The FAA wrote in his reply that, “the contents of the application is nothing but your private subject. We have already submitted the letter whereby it is informed to you that, on the basis of documents supplied by you, the city survey officer sent all these xerox copies to additional district govt pleader (ADGP) Usha Gujar. After perusing your own documents, Ex-ADGP has given an opinion. The documents which are offered by you are already deposited by you with the city survey officer. There is no provision under any Act to give xerox copies of the documents supplied to you. Your application is nothing but to harass the authorities. You are hereby directed not to file such application hereinafter otherwise it will be informed to the higher authority.”
The RTI applicant then filed his second appeal with the information commission at Nagpur. Rahul Pandey, information commissioner of Nagpur division analysed the copies of documents sent by Mr Jog and the legal opinion given by the government pleader and observed that the opinion is not based on the documents supplied by the RTI applicant.
Hence, Mr Pandey observed that, “he has the right to get the information on which documents were referred to. It is only then that the applicant can determine the fate of his property. Since the documents have been already furnished to the party, they can no more be confidential and he is entitled to know as this is also not any third-party information as was being argued by the lawyers of the government pleader’s office during the second appeal hearings.”
Mr Pandey, in his order, directed the city survey office to produce the list of documents that it forwarded to the district government pleader’s office. The city survey PIO replied that all the documents have been destroyed, hence, he cannot provide them.
Mr Pandey then asked him to provide him with a copy of the procedure for the destruction of government documents of this type. However, the PIO has yet to submit it, despite several months having gone by.
Truly, while the impact of this SIC decision may not result in any heads rolling either in the city survey office or at the district government pleader’s office, surely it will make these authorities wary before manipulating and providing alleged lies under the RTI Act.
(Vinita Deshmukh is consulting editor of Moneylife. She is also the convener of the Pune Metro Jagruti Abhiyaan. She is the recipient of prestigious awards like the Statesman Award for Rural Reporting, which she won twice in 1998 and 2005 and the Chameli Devi Jain award for outstanding media person for her investigation series on Dow Chemicals. She co-authored the book “To The Last Bullet - The Inspiring Story of A Braveheart - Ashok Kamte” with Vinita Kamte and is the author of “The Mighty Fall”.)
