RIGHT TO INFORMATION - 2009 - Indian Social Institute

Association as a reply to the RTI. Randhawa had filed the application two days ago on behalf of Shanno's
father, Ayub Khan. The LNJP authorities, in their reply clearly refused to share any information with
Shanno's family. "This is to inform you that the life and liberty in this case is dead, hence the provision of
section 7 (1) does not apply in this case. Moreover, information asked for cannot be provided as per
provisions of section 8 (1) (j) of RTI Act,'' the reply said. Leading RTI activist Arvind Kejriwal, meanwhile,
slammed the replies. "Both replies are illegal under present conditions. MAMC should have replied to
those questions relating to the postmortem. They could forward only those questions pertaining to the
child's treatment to LNJP Hospital. LNJP Hospital too cannot hide behind section 8 (1) since nothing here
is private information. A criminal case has been lodged in this case and society has the right to know what
went wrong,'' he said. Kejriwal also promised support to Randhawa in filing an appeal in this regard with
the CIC. Meanwhile, hearing of Ayub Khan's plea is expected to begin at the Delhi High Court on
Monday. In another development, Ayub told Times City that he will take his two daughters Sainaz and
Saina to the Batla House orphanage on Saturday morning. (Times of India 2/5/09)
Despite RTI Act, officials stonewall information seekers (1)
BANGALORE: A team of journalism students investigating various issues discovered that it was not easy
to source information under the Right to Information Act. With the exception of the Lokayukta office,
students of the Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media were either turned away or given responses
as late as three months after information was sought. Sample this. Peeved with increasing number of
news reports on Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa’s temple visits, P. Krishnamurthy and Pavan Kumar H.
sought official records and expenditure details on the subject. “We found 23 such visits reported in
newspapers from May 30 to November 15, but the RTI response mentioned only nine,” he said. Further,
the RTI revealed that the Chief Minister spent over Rs. 11 lakh government funds. This piece of “partial
information” took 12 visits to the Chief Minister’s Special Officer in the Vidhana Soudha over three
months, Mr. Kumar added. Tackling the issue of mounting numbers of accidents involving BMTC buses,
another group filed an RTI application in November. One month later, students were told that the “RTI
application was misplaced”. Shockingly in January, a second application met with a similar fate. “We had
to approach the appellate authority only to find that out of 500 fatal accidents from 2000 to 2008, 317
occurred due to driver negligence,” said Urmi Misra. However, of the 317 only 35 drivers were dismissed.
Twenty-eight drivers were involved in more than one fatal accident. While the story behind every project
pointed to the “obvious loopholes” in the system, the institute’s visiting professor and Pulitzer awardwinning
journalist Ralph Frammolino said these stories point to the difficulties in obtaining information.
Students Manasi Phadke and Brenton Cordeiro said their task was the easiest with Lokayukta being
“most co-operative”. “In this case, the intention was to show that although this office is a bully pulpit and
its actions may act as deterrent, the complaints and raids do not always translate into action,” said Mr.
Frammolino. The RTI revealed that less that one per cent of 26,000 complaints resulted in verified
punishments. Mr. Frammolino, who guided the investigative group “I-team”, pointed out that the RTI filed
with the Department of Public Instruction and block-level education offices failed to fetch desired results.
“They are not upfront about who’s on leave, and many offices have not given us any reply to date,” said
Anirban Sen. “We asked for 100 teachers with highest absentee records and they gave us 10. And when
we asked primary data of the SSA 2008 survey, we were turned away,” added Krishna Merchant, who
worked in the same team. (The Hindu 3/5/09)
Delhi High Court allows intervention in CIC case (1)
NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court has allowed an intervention application by voluntary organisation
Rashtriya Mukti Morcha seeking to be impleaded in an appeal challenging an order by the Central
Information Commission (CIC). The CIC had directed the Supreme Court Registry to provide information
to a social activist regarding the declaration of assets by the judges of the apex court and the High
Courts. The applicant, Rasthriya Mukti Morcha president Ravinder Kumar, submitted that he was of the
firm view that non-declaration of assets by the judges ran counter to the basic structure principle of the
Constitution. Allowing the application, Justice S. Ravindra Bhat posted the matter for hearing on May 4.
There is a stay on the operation of a CIC order. Mr. Justice Bhat of the Delhi High Court had stayed the
order in January on an appeal by the Supreme Court Registry. The CIC had on January 6 directed the
Registry to furnish to Subhash Chandra Agrawal information whether judges had declared their assets as
per a May 7, 1997, resolution adopted at an all-India judges’ conference. Mr. Agrawal had sought the
information under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. The CIC had rejected the Supreme Court’s