Complaints about violations of the Right to Information Act from Mysore district were heard by the Karnataka Information Commission on 19-12-11. The hearings were conducted via teleconferencing, with the two opposing parties sitting at the DC's Office, Mysore and the State Chief Information Commissioner at his office in Bangalore. These are my experiences at the hearings.
Notices had been issued to the complainants and defendants to be present at the teleconferencing room at the DC's office at 10 AM. But at 10 AM, only two complainants and two defendants were present. The video operator came at 10.05 and started setting up the call to Bangalore. At 10.15 the Mysore City Commissioner came and the DC came at 10.30. The telelink to Bangalore was established at 10.30 but the SCIC had not come. At 10.45, most of the complainants and the defendants had assembled and the room was full. At 10.55 a message was received from Bangalore that the hearings would start at 11.15. The SCIC came on the screen at 11.22, said that he was held up by traffic and apologized for the delay in the start of the proceedings. The hearings finally started at 11.24.
Most of the complainants were rural people who had not received the information they had sought from village or taluk level information officers. It appeared that most of these officers who were attending the hearings were not at all well-prepared. Many had come without the concerned files and "I am new to this job" and "The file is missing" were common answers to the SCIC's questions. The SCIC was so exasperated at one point that he remarked "No one is telling the truth!"
The lack of preparation by the information officers may be related to the fact that the Information Commissions are reluctant to punish the errant officers. In the present hearings, there were only a couple of cases in which the information had been supplied within one month (the period specified by the RTI Act), but in the 30 odd other cases in which the information had not been supplied within the prescribed time limit, the SCIC imposed a punishment only once.
According to the RTI Act, if the information officer does not provide the information in 30 days, the applicant should first appeal to the appellate authority (who is usually the head of the government institution where the information is sought) and if the information is still not forthcoming, he should appeal to the Information Commission. So if a complaint is filed before the Information Commission, it means that both the information officer and the appellate authority have not done their job. But the RTI act prescribes punishment only to the information officers and none to the appellate authorities. This is not right.
But there seems to be a way around this shortcoming of the law. According to Sec. 19(8)(b) of the Act, the Commission can require the public authority to compensate the complainant for any loss or other detriment suffered. Combining this provision of the law with the order of the Supreme Court (III(1993) CPJ 7 (SC)) which says that when a government department is fined for deficiency in service, the official responsible for the deficiency must be personally held liable for the fine, the Information Commissions can punish the appellate authority also for dereliction of duty.
One problem with the teleconference hearings was that the SCIC could not hear clearly what the parties were saying. This was because the microphone was at the head of the table and the seats just behind the microphone were occupied by the DC and MCC Commissioner and the parties had to take seats to one side. When the parties were looking at the screen to see the SCIC, their voices were not being picked up by the microphone. This problem can be easily solved by seating the parties themselves at the head of the table.
The inability of the SCIC to hear the parties clearly led to at least one unfair decision, in which the SCIC ordered that the complainant should pay the required page fees to obtain the information. This information had not been supplied to the complainant within 30 days of his application and so according to Sec. 7(6) of the RTI Act, the page charges have to be waived. The complainant was arguing this point, but obviously the SCIC did not hear him and passed the order for the payment of page charges.
Surya Prakash, Mysore Grahakara Parishat