Bhubaneswar: Despite the tall claims of transparency under the much-touted 5T initiative of the state government, a clear case of careless official response to queries under the Right To Information (RTI) Act has come to the fore.
Recently, a city-based human rights activist, Bijay Kumar Panda, submitted an RTI application to Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) seeking specific information about a government policy.
Panda, through an RTI application, had asked the Public Information Officer (PIO) of the BMC to supply details regarding the policy being adopted during allocation of kiosks in the municipal limits of the city. His query pertained to allocation and construction of 60 kiosks from the Sishubhawan Square to Master Canteen stretch in Bhubaneswar.
The applicant sought information such as the eligibility criteria of applicants, annual or monthly fees being charged from them after kiosk allotment, whether BMC floats tenders for such allotment and the basic objective for which kiosks are being planned to be allotted. Panda submitted the RTI application August 21, 2019.
However, the BMC officials started passing the buck on to other departments in order to evade a direct response to the specific query.
Responding to Panda’s query, the BMC public information officer said the answer to the RTI application rests with authorities of the Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited (BSCL) and transferred the query to BSCL (Vide letter No. 27157 dated September 27, 2019).
Interestingly, according to the provisions of the RTI Act, the PIOs are required to transfer the applications within a maximum period of five days (from the date of actual receipt of query) to concerned departments under which they think specific information can be available.
However, the BMC officials sent the application to the BSCL after about 30 days, which is the virtual deadline to supply answers to RTI queries.
Meanwhile, the PIO of BSCL rejected the application and informed the applicant that the guidelines of the policy fall under the jurisdiction of BMC, hence BSCL cannot respond to the query.
Additionally, Panda who had sought to physically inspect the files pertaining to kiosk drawings, was advised by the BSCL officials to reach its office for personal verification.
Interestingly, the PIO did not mention the date and time of the physical verification of the kiosk drawings. In his inability to get any information, the rights activist alleged that the intention of the authorities was to evade providing info in this regard as they had planned to allot the kiosks without calling for tenders.
Meanwhile, Panda has moved the Chief Information Commission urging it to direct the authorities to supply the needed details and punish the officials responsible for denying him his right to information under Section 20(I) of RTI Act.
