| Friends, In the same decision of the Central Information Commission, File.No. CIC/AT/ A/2006/00610 Dated, 26/02/2007, Shri Rajeev Shrivastava vs Shri Vijay Sood, CPIO and others, related with a Departmental Proceeding other than concluding that a disciplinary proceeding against an employee of the public authority invariably assumes the characteristics of an investigation and hence they do attract the exemption under Section 8(1)(h) of the RTI Act, which bars disclosure of information pertaining to any current investigation, Sri A N Tiwari, the Commissioner also made some generalized comments. I present some of the more sweeping ones-
"This Commission has received several appeals from employees of public authorities who are involved in court proceedings against the public authority or are facing enquiries and charges from their employers. In such cases, the common trend is to ask for a large number and a large variety of information on proceedings current either before a Tribunal or a disciplinary authority."
"The only purpose for which the parallel proceeding under the RTI Act is resorted to is to build pressure on the public authority in order to make it difficult for them to proceed with the disciplinary proceeding against the employee or to defend its own case against such employee before a Tribunal"
"Quite frequently, the queries raised in RTI aim at eliciting from the public authority replies which can then be used to impeach their own submissions before the Tribunal or the Courts. If such petitions are not strictly scrutinized under the appropriate provisions of the RTI Act, they will, in the guise of the right to information, end up impairing good governance."
"In conditions narrated above, the unstated attempt by those at the receiving end of disciplinary actions by public authorities is to employ the RTI Act as some sort of a sledge-hammer to knock-down existing systems in order to escape unscathed from its punishing pursuit. I do not think that was the purpose for which the RTI Act was unveiled in the first place."
I personally feel that by making up one's mind about every such employee against whom Departmental enquiry (DE) is ever initiated; Sri Tiwari is possibly being prejudiced or one-sided. Many of this comments can be prima-facie called coloured and overwhelmingly generalized ones. One needs to understand that there can be all kinds of situations in which an employee has been wrongly framed in a DE for some extraneous reasons and hence if such an employee gets genuine benefit from the documents related with the DE, the entire exercise will only serve the cause of justice, as envisaged by the RTI Act. Hence, it is also advisable that any one-sided hasty conclusions by higher authorities is avoided. Any comments? Amitabh, President, National RTI Forum, lucknow # 94155-34526 amitabhth@yahoo.com , amitabhthakurlko@gmail.com |
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