In critiques of this nature statistics, when available, are
an important factor in providing authenticity to the narrative.
Kerala State Information Commission (KSIC) had
been periodically putting up data about registration, disposal and pending
cases. But they have not followed any
standard format. For example, in 2007 and 2014 it is cases registered and
disposed, the pending figures are left to be calculated by the viewer. In 2021
it is registered and pending, disposed is left to be calculated. On closer scrutiny it is seen that there is
no integrity either. Here is some data compared from 4 documents downloaded at
three different times:
Abbreviations
used: C- Complaints; A- Appeals.
|
|
|
|
Registered |
Disposed |
Received |
Pending |
||||
|
|
|
|
Note: C-Complaint, A-Appeal |
|||||||
|
Row No |
Doc downloaded |
Period |
C |
A |
C |
A |
C |
A |
C |
A |
|
Date (ddmmyy) |
Column No > |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
|
|
1 |
270907-Monthly |
Jan-Dec 2006 |
471 |
226 |
309 |
176 |
|
|||
|
2 |
Jan-May 2007 |
296 |
270 |
80 |
84 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
3 |
200114-Annual Oct 2005-Nov 2013 |
Oct 2005-Dec 2006 |
454 |
216 |
107 |
45 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
4 |
130721-Annual |
Jan-Dec 2006 |
|
|
|
|
472 |
226 |
0 |
0 |
|
5 |
2006-21 |
Jan-Dec 2017 |
|
|
|
|
1382 |
2382 |
500 |
1105 |
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
6 |
130721-Monthly |
Jan-Dec 2017 |
547 |
2057 |
||||||
|
May2016-Feb2021 |
||||||||||
Notes:
(i)
Presuming that Registered and
Received mean same, figures at R1C1 (471)
does not tally with R4C5 (472).
*R1C1 means cell at Row1, Column 1
(ii)
R1C1 (471)-R1C3 (309) = 162 (Pending
complaints at the end of 2006). It is shown as zero in R4C7. Similar
discrepancy for appeals too.
(iii)
R5C5 (1382)-R6C3 (547) = 835 (Pending
complaints at the end of 2017). It is shown as 500 in R5C7. Similar discrepancy
for appeals too.
(iv)
Standard
format for presenting such data is already available,
for example in financial accounting. There is always the Amount Brought
Forward, Receipts/Income during the month/year, Payments/Expenditure during the
same period and Amount Carried Forward/Pending. This would translate to: Cases
Brought Forward, New Cases Registered, Cases Disposed Of, Cases Carried
Forward. If the cases are disposed of on First Come, First Served basis, as it
should be, the cases brought forward, in an annual statement, cannot be older
than the ones registered during the previous year and there cannot be cases
that are older than those registered in the current year that are carried
forward. Under the circumstances, since cases, even complaints, are pending for
many years the Cases Brought Forward, Cases Disposed Of and Cases Carried
Forward will need sub-columns indicating the years pertaining to the cases too.
This kind of detail is necessary to ensure that cases are not
pending for unduly long periods and also for institutions like banks to track their
Non Performing Assets involved in court cases.
(v)
The above data had thrown up more
facts like between the 4 ICs, including the CIC, in 2006, they had disposed of
only 485 cases, including complaints. Presuming 200 working days for 2 who were
there throughout the year and 120 days for two who had been appointed only on
24/05/2006, it works out to just less
than one case per IC per day.
(vi)
It was at this point that I decided to do a
thorough study of the information available at the website of the KSIC. The
results have been compiled separately as SUBVERSION
OF THE RIGHT TO INFORMATION (RTI) ACT: A CASE STUDY OF KERALA STATE INFORMATION
COMMISSION (KSIC). This is attached at the end of this paper. Copy of this has already been
submitted to the constitutional authorities like the Governor of Kerala, the
President of India and the CJI through email to keralagovernor@gmail.com, presidentofindia@rb.nic.in and justice.dychandrachud@sci.nic.in.
It is pertinent to recollect here that a
letter had been addressed to the President of India, on 21/04/2007, to remove
Wajahat Habibullah, the first CIC of the Central Information Commission when he
had sent an appeal under the RTI Act, against the PIO of the National Consumer
Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRC), to the KSIC. Not once, but twice.
The simple fact was that a complaint had been
submitted to the then President of the NCDRC, M B Shah, in person by me on 17
Aug 2005, as a member of Save Consumer Courts Action Council, a collective of
consumer activists of Kerala. The complaint was, among other things, that he
had filed a false affidavit in the High Court of Kerala and it had been placed
on record by the High Court in Confederation of Consumer Vigilance Centre Vs
State of Kerala (2004(3) KLT 1073). The relevant extract of the order is given
below:
The President may by order remove from office the Chief
Information Commissioner or any Information Commissioner if the Chief Information
Commissioner or a Information Commissioner, as the case may be,—
is, in the opinion of the
President, unfit to continue in
office by reason of infirmity of mind or body
Needless to say, no action was taken and
Wajahat Habibullah continued in office to subvert the law with impunity.
Here are a few more examples of the
preposterous failures of the Central Information Commission:
1.
Two appeals were sent on 07/07/2010, under
one covering letter, against the PIOs of State Bank of India. One was disposed
of on 18/12/2010, and the other lost. In the one that was disposed of, the
decision was correct but the delay was condoned without reason. The lost appeal
was never found. Against an application under the RTI Act to find its disposal,
even though the FAA had directed the PIO to trace it, the IC, Shailesh Gandhi,
disposed it off by stating that all available information had been provided. If there is one example needed to prove Schopenhauer, this was it. This also proved another glaring lapse- the failure of ICs to go
through the appeals themselves and the failure of the CIC as an institution
to even conduct inquiries to fix responsibility and take corrective action.
2.
The
best decision I have ever received on an appeal under the RTI Act was from
Annapoorna Dixit. The appeal was against the failure of the PIO of Southern
Railway, Chennai to provide information on the progress of construction of road
over bridges (ROBs) in the erstwhile Palakkad Division. It was declined under the most misused provision of voluminous
information diverting the resources of the public authority disproportionately.
But the IC directed it to be provided, as per order dated 19/05/2009 in
appeal number CIC/OK/A/2008/00766-AD. I
got 13 pages of Excel spreadsheet data. Meanwhile the delay in providing
this data had exceeded 100 days warranting
imposition of the maximum penalty of Rs 25,000/-. But the IC just took the
period between her direction and provision of the information as the delay
period and imposed just Rs 7000/- as
penalty as per adjunct dated 16/06/2009 to the earlier order.
3.
Subsequently, an update of the same
details was sought through an application dated on 19/09/2013. There were no responses either from the PIO
or from the FAA. The IC, Vijay
Sharma, in his order dated 08/07/2015, recorded a lie that the PIO had
provided a reply on 04/10/2013, when it was just a letter forwarding the
application to the concerned PIO under Section 5 of the RTI Act. Isn’t there
something drastically wrong with the selection process of the information
commissioners? If this is the quality
and competence of the people selected after their retirement from regular
employment is there any need to imagine why our system of administration in
government is so corrupt and treacherous?
4.
In another simple case with the
railways, I had sought copies of the
reservation chart which had been updated by the TTE during a journey. The
intention was two-fold: one, to check whether the TTE was allotting berths to
passengers who had been provided sitting accommodation in sleeper coaches
strictly in the order of the Reservation Against Cancellation (RAC) list. The
second one was to learn if those passengers who had to complete the travel
availing sitting accommodation only, even though they had paid the full sleeper
class fare while purchasing the tickets, were eligible for refund of the excess
fare. These two issues are interrelated too. Because, having paid the full
fare, the TTE needed to only allot berths falling vacant due to some passengers
failing to turn up. There was no need to issue any fresh receipt for additional
charges. This provides a better environment for corruption where the TTE could
just mark the berth allotted to an RAC passenger, in the reservation chart held
with him.
Horror of horrors, the PIO, P A
Dhananjayan, IRTS, Senior Divisional Commercial Manager, Railway Divisional
Office, Palakkad replied on 04/10/2013 that an amount of Rs 750/- per PNR number should be paid for every page.
The relevant extract of the reply is given below:
Incidentally,
even the Rs 2/- demanded for supplying one page of their internal order is
illegal as such information is required to be provided suo moto under Section
4(1)(b)(v) of the RTI Act.
So no prizes for
guessing what would be the order of the IC. In this case, IC Bimal Julka, disposed of the appeal,
CIC/VS/A/2014/001182/BJ on 14/07/2016 with the
lie that ‘the information sought by the appellant had been provided’.
5.
An appeal against the Animal Welfare
Board, pending with the Central IC, since 16/02/2023, without even an
acknowledgement, is a classic illustration of how the RTI Act has been
castrated. There had been no response from
the PIO or the FAA. It could easily have been a complaint but since ICs
have been seen sending the complaint to the FAA for providing a reply and
directing the complainant to file the appeal again if no reply or
unsatisfactory reply is received, this unwarranted procedure was sought to be
avoided by filing the 1st appeal in the usual manner and then the 2nd
appeal.
6.
To subvert a simple, unambiguous law
like the RTI Act needs special skill. That is how I homed on to those
responsible for administering government services. There is a quip: a man at 20
if he is not an idealist has no heart, at 40 if he is not pragmatic, he has no
head. And I have read about the rank holders of Civil Services Exam claiming
that they chose it for serving the public. I have no reason for not believing
them. But then there is certainly a big slip between what they talk and do
later. I know that the candidates for
civil services are not selected based on any assessed quality like armed forces
officers are in the Services Selection Boards. The only assessment is of
memorizing and recollecting. A matter of 1 percent motivation, 9 percent
perspiration and 90 percent luck. Because the canvas is wide, a question that
becomes pertinent is: what is the need
to know the name of the President of Timbaktu to be a clerk in a government
office? That’s when I decided to find out how the Alma Mater of the babus
respond to applications under the RTI Act.
On 07 Apr 2017, I
sought some information from the Lal Bahadur Sastri National Academy of
Administration (LBSNAA) where future administrators of the government are
trained. The information sought (IS)
and the reply received (RR), along
with my comments are given below:
IS 1.1. What is the duration of training of a member newly
admitted into the IAS? Provide the date of commencement of training of the
current batch and the date when it will conclude. If there is no such batch
undergoing training, provide teh date of commencement and conclusion of training
of the last batch.
RR: The duration of training are: Foundation
Course from 29/08/2016 to 9/12/2016, IAS
Course Professional Course Phase 1 from 12/1/22016 to 12/05/2017. District Training during IAS Phase II
will be for 53 weeks and professional
course Phase II will be for 6 weeks in LBSNAA, Mussoorie.
Comment: Is the reply
complete and unambiguous? You decide.
IS 1.2. If the training period is in different
phases/parts/institutions/places provide the details of each phase, duration in
weeks and institutions/places
RR: The period will be as above. Intuitional
(sic) training to be in the State ATIs and period
will be differ in each case.
Comment: Presuming
that the institutional training is part of the District Training, it has to
be within the 53 weeks. But why are the dates not provided for these 53 weeks
of an ongoing course? And the dated of the 6 weeks of Phase II training?
IS 1.3. Are the trainees provided stipend/salary during the
period of training or any part/phase of the training?
RR: During the Foundation Course and IAS Professional Course Phase 1 the academy pays salary advance of Rs
50,000/- per month. After reliving (sic) from the Academy after completion of
Phase I training, the trainees get full salary from their respective state
government.
Comment: An advance is paid from what is due in future.
So what does this salary advance paid during the foundation course and Phase I
Professional Course mean?
IS 1.9. When is the service period reckoned from- on reporting
for/commencement of training or completion of training and reporting for duty?
RR: The
service period reckoned from reporting of training.
Comment: That nails it,
doesn’t it? If the service period is reckoned from the date of reporting for
training, then the remuneration/salary has also got to be due from that date.
So why obfuscate a simple issue? (For the moment, forget the confusion between
date of reporting for, which will be variable for each candiate, and date of
commencement of training, which will be the same for all candidates.)
The first appeal was responded to with a curt This appeal is being treated as cancelled.
Kindly desist from further communciation on this issue with this authority. It
was signed by Thulasi Maddineni as the Appellate Authority and Deputy Director.
Apart from filing the 2nd appeal with the Central Information Commission on
14/07/2017 (which is pending till date), the only other thing I could do was to
write to the Director, LBSNAA to either send the FAA to a lunatic asylum or try
him/her for treason.
It would be presumptuous of me to quote
celebrities on corruption in India. The deaf, dumb and the blind know the
extent to which it prevails in India. N N Vohra Committee’s Report of 1993- on
the politician-bureaucrat-underworld nexus is passé. One just needs to browse
through media reports about the scams in Kerala during the last 8 years where
the name of the Chief Minister, Pinarayi Vijayan and his Secretary, Sivasankaran
of the IAS, has figured. Also the reports of life convicts in prisons getting
privileges not available to ordinary under-trials would cover the other link
too. Not to forget the tax payers’ money
being splurged by the government to engage celebrity lawyers to challenge even CBI
enquiries ordered by the high court in murder cases.
In the years since the establishment of the
Independent Commission against Corruption (ICAC) in 1974, Hong
Kong had been transformed into one of the least corrupt places in the world, as
recognized by international institutions such as the World Bank, the Heritage
Foundation and Transparency International.
In India we have the Central Vigilance
Commission operating since 1964, though it was given a statutory status only in
2003 through the CVC Act. But how effective has the CVC been in controlling
corruption? The only case I can recollect
in the context of the CVC is of a Central Vigilance Commissioner being removed in
2011 by the apex court, due to a case pending against him in a scam since 1992.
Any data available on corrupt public servants prosecuted and punished? The
website of the CVC hasn’t published even the information required to be
disclosed under Section 4(1)(b) of the RTI Act, completely. Even the disclosure
under Section 4(1)(b)(x) regarding remuneration of the officers and employees
have been provided only in terms of levels of a pay matrix which makes no sense
to the layman. Even the number of employees at each level has not been
provided. That way the apex court
disclosure is one step better because the scale of pay at each level of the
matrix has been provided and the nominal roll of the employees has been provided
separately.
The problem, as I can see it, is the
government’s over dependence on babus. Whether it is the CVC or the CIC,
retired babus are rehabilitated in these offices to deal with alleged offences/defects/deficiencies
in services against their ex-colleagues. It had to be a sure shot prescription
for disaster. The judiciary did try to have a share of the pie by ordering that
information commissioners shall decide cases in benches of two, one being from
the judiciary. They had to beat a hasty retreat. Namit Sharma cases only
created confusion for a few months and then it was all back to normal.
Interestingly, the apex court recently tried
to take on a role in the appointment of the Election Commissioners (and not for
a role as election commissioner itself), forgetting that it was not only the
election commissioners who were being appointed in the manner they are by a
committee comprising the Prime Minister, another minister and the Leader of the
Opposition. These kinds of interventions would really make any rational citizen
question the intentions and competence of the judiciary too.
P M Ravindran/ raviforjustice@gmail.com
/23 Feb 2024
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