A Right to Information (RTI) applicant sought certified copies of documents, including file notings, from the department of expenditure, regarding the ministry of finance having given permission to the ministry of health to change certain requirements for giving non-practising allowance (NPA) also to those employees who do not fall into the medical category.
Thus, NPA can, from 7 July 2017, be paid also to employees who do not have clinical jobs. This could include those working in administration, research, or teaching, the objective being, as per the ministry of health, to attract and retain talented employees.
The rider here is that the RTI applicant, Nityananda Das, is himself the affected party as his pension has not been revised as per NPA and his payment of gratuity amount as per the seventh Central Pay Commission (CPC) in Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) from where he retired, has not been received. However, as per the RTI Act, he is very much eligible to invoke RTI.
The RTI applications he filed for the same information are as under:
- 41 RTI applications since December 2020 (all disposed by the central public information officer—CPIO).
- 30 RTI first appeals since January 2021 (all disposed by the first appellate authority—FAA).
- Second appeal in CIC: Seven second appeals heard since 2 May 2022 and 10 second appeals listed and heard on 3 March 2023.
The CPIO replied to his earlier RTI applications that “the public authority is supposed to furnish only such information which is available in a material form. CPIO is not supposed to give opinion/advice or to solve problems/queries/clarifications/inferences raised by the applicant or to deduce conclusion from the information held by him, under RTI Act. Since the information sought by you is query/clarificatory/interpretation/references in nature, it does not conform to Section 2(f) of RTI Act 2005. Hence, the information in this regard may be treated as nil.” FAA upheld the CPIO’s reply.
CIC Saroj Punhani, recently, in March this year, ordered that “The instant matter is considered as a mere extension of the earlier cases filed by the appellant on the same grievance of grant of NPA and therefore no action is warranted with respect to the original reply of the CPIO or the FAA's order.”
Ms Punhani referred to the earlier CIC decisions on the many RTI applications which sought similar information. One of the observations of the applicant who is seeking relief by appealing to the CIC to penalise the CPIO under Section 20 of the RTI Act: “It appears that the complainant is aggrieved with the pay fixation of scientists and the failure to include NPA in the revision of the pension given to him after the implementation of the 7th CPC, delay in the payment of gratuity amount and through all his above listed RTI applications, he is trying to redress his grievance in the garb of seeking information under the RTI Act through these multiple complaints which are often overlapping with each other.”
The earlier CIC decisions on his bunch of RTI applications are as follows:
* The appellant is not even asking for 'information' as envisaged under Section 2(f) of the RTI Act, rather seeks answers to speculative and interrogative queries. The appellant shall note that outstretching the interpretation of Section 2(f) of the RTI Act to include deductions and inferences to be drawn by the CPIO is unwarranted as it casts immense pressure on the CPIOs to ensure that they provide the correct deduction/inference to avoid being subject to penal provisions under the RTI Act.
* The commission finds no malafide intent on the part of the CPIO as it can be seen that in almost all the cases, replies have been given by the CPIO and considering the fact that the complainant had filed multiple numbers of RTI applications and in each of his applications, voluminous information was being sought. The commission is constrained to state that the complainant has resorted to filing of repeated RTI applications which have generated from one or two issues, and therefore the commission finds no scope to further intervene in these matters.
* The CPIO and the FAA cannot be expected to satisfy the complainant, when the complainant is not in search of information but only settling his service grievances against the department by filing multiple, vexatious, repetitive RTI applications followed by appeals and complaints. All the complaints are inter-related in some manner or the other and are clearly indicative of absolute misuse of the provisions of the RTI Act.
* While one CIC stated that the RTI applicant could be given “an opportunity to inspect all the relevant records available with the respondent organisation, so that the complainant may himself see what all information is required by him,” he stated in the same breath, “the complainant is only exhausting the resources of the public authority as well as the commission. Instead, he should approach the appropriate forum of law or the competent Court for redressal of his service grievances.”
* Such multiple RTI applications will have, “a continuous harassing effect on the public authority. As the PIOs go on answering, more and more questions are generated out of the same and in the same proportion the number of repeated first appeals and second appeals also will be growing.”
* The Act should not be allowed to be misused or abused, to become a tool to obstruct national development and integration, or to destroy the peace, tranquility and harmony among its citizens. Nor should it be converted into a tool of oppression or intimidation of honest officials striving to do their duty. The nation does not want a scenario where 75% of the staff of public authorities spends 75% of their time in collecting and furnishing information to applicants instead of discharging their regular duties. The threat of penalties under the RTI Act and the pressure of the authorities under the RTI Act should not lead to employees of public authorities prioritising 'information furnishing', at the cost of their normal and regular duties.
* Terming his RTI applications as “promotion of the self interest, rather than public interest,” and that “no information with regard to file notings of this department was provided to the applicant, as it would be a disadvantageous position of the government in order to take a decision in the above said policy matter.” And that “he is a habitual information seeker.”
CIC Punhani warned the RTI applicant that no more RTI applications would be entertained regarding the same issue by ordering that “the appellant is further cautioned that henceforth any repetitive case on the same subject matter - of grant or revision of NPA may be summarily dismissed by the commission.”
The point is whether documents and file notings pertaining to the larger public interest, in this case, NPAs for other employees, should come under such fire. Shouldn't they have been, suo motu, put up in the public domain by the public authority, in this case, the department of expenditure?
(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”.)
