SOCIAL AUDIT OF CIC DECISIONS

Date: 27-12-2012                                                                                By email

To,

Shri Satyananda Mishra

Chief Information Commissioner

Central Information Commission,

New Delhi-110067

Email: s.mishra@nic.in

Hon’ble Sir,

Subject: Decision No. CIC/SM/A/2012/000981 & 982 of 21-12-2012- SOCIAL AUDIT

This bears reference to paragraph 6 of your captioned decision copy of which is attached herewith for ready reference.

You have decided not to impose penalty, despite having come to the conclusion that provisions of RTI Act have been breached, keeping in view administrative difficulties of CPIO. In this connection I humbly invite your kind attention to paragraph 13 of judgement dated 07-01-2010 of Hon’ble High Court of Madras in W.P.NO.20372 of 2009 and M.P.NO.1 OF 2009, which reads as under:

“13. The other objections that they are maintaining a large number of documents in respect of 45 departments and they are short of human resources cannot be raised to whittle down the citizens' right to seek information. It is for them to write to the Government to provide for additional staff depending upon the volume of requests that may be forthcoming pursuant to the RTI Act. It is purely an internal matter between the petitioner archives and the State Government. The right to information having been guaranteed by the law of Parliament, the administrative difficulties in providing information cannot be raised. Such pleas will defeat the very right of citizens to have access to information. Hence the objections raised by the petitioner cannot be countenanced by this court. The writ petition lacks in merit.” [Emphasis added]

I also seek your kind reference to decision No. CIC/SG/C/2010/000005/6929 Penalty dated 19-03-2010 of CIC itself.

While your decisions are well reasoned, positive and innovative in approach, at least in this case, the decision challenges high court judgement quoted above.

Please do the needful lest other CPIOs will also hide under administrative difficulties quoting this decision in future puncturing RTI of common citizens.

Yours faithfully,

J. P. Shah

Encl: 1