Ordeal in payment of fee in P&AR Department

To:
The Secretary,
Personnel and Administrative reforms department,
Secretariat,
Chennai - 600009.

From:
V.Madhav,
31/IV, Maan Sarovar Raaja Apts.,
11A, Arcot Road,
Porur, Chennai - 600116.
Ph: 9840327303.

Date: 1-Apr-09

Subject: Regarding mode of payment of RTI fees in the P&AR department.

Sir,
This is with respect to the mode of payment of Right to Information fees under the Right to Information act, 2005.

On 31st Dec 2005 I had come to the P&AR department for inspection of the file related to the GO, in which DVAC and TSVC were exempted from the Right to Information act. After that inspection, on the same day, I had given a requisition asking for copies of some pages of the file. For this I received a letter from Mr.P.Rangaraju, Appellate authority/Deputy Secretary to Government, P&AR department informing me that the cost of the information I had sought, comes to Rs.104 and that I had to pay it as Demand Draft/Bankers’ Cheque/Treasury Challan/Cash.

So yesterday, 31st Mar 2009, around 12.00 noon, I went to the P&AR department to pay the fees. I intended to pay it as cash. And this is what happened.
1. There I met the Mr.P.Rangaraju because he was the person who sent me the letter. He asked me to go meet Mr.Chandrasekaran, Under secretary since he was the PIO.
2. When I met Mr.Chandrasekaran, he asked me to go the section, which was near the office of the NIC in the secretariat to pay the fees as cash.
3. So I went there and met Ms.Janaki, Section officer. She pointed out that this letter was received from P&AR (N) department and so I should go and meet Mr.Thilagar who was the Under Secretary for the N department. This was probably correct, but I don’t know why the Appellate Authority asked me to meet Mr.Chandrasekhar and why Mr.Chandrasekhar asked me to go to this section. But those can be assumed to be genuine mistakes on their part.
4. I went and met Mr.Thilagar, who said that cash cannot be accepted as payment and asked me to meet Mr.Vilvam, a section officer of N department.
5. I went and met Mr.Vilvam who said that cash cannot be accepted and I had to pay it only through a treasury challan and again took me back to Mr.Thilagar.
6. Here again Mr.Thilagar and Mr.Vilvam tried to explain to me the problems they had in accepting cash, since they did not have any facility for accepting cash at the office and that I had to pay it only through a treasury challan. When I asked in what name the DD has to be paid, Mr.Thilagar told me that DDs will not be accepted and that I had to pay only through Challan. I gave the option of paying through cheque since I pointed out that the procedure for both cheque and DD would be the same. Even that was not agreed. Finally I has to relent and agree to pay through Challan, but requested Mr.Thilagar to talk to the Secretary of the P&AR department, and try to arrange some facility for accepting cash. Mr.Thilagar then talked to Ms.Janaki over phone and asked her to keep a challan ready, and then asked me to go there and get the Challan.
7. I went to meet Ms.Janaki to get the Challan form. She told me that she did not have the challan and told me that the Challans will be available at RBI. Even Mr.Thilagar pointed out that the Challans would be available at RBI. When I told Ms.Janaki that on a different occasion when I asked for a Challan at RBI, they asked me to get it from the Secretariat, Ms.Janaki asked me to get a Challan from Pay and Accounts Office on the second floor.
8. And so I went to Pay and Accounts office on the second floor where they said that they normally do not have challan copies and that I had to get it only from the department.
9. So I went back to Ms.Janaki and told her that Pay and Accounts office did not give me a Challan, and by this time it was 1.40 PM. The Reserve Bank refuses payments after 2 PM.
10. So when Ms.Janaki and I went back to the P&AR department on the first floor, Mr.Thilagar and Mr.Chandrasekhar were also there. I told them the whole thing and about how I was made to go around like this for a Challan copy. Then I told them that I don’t need a challan now, since by the time I reach RBI it will be more than 2 PM and so will not be able to pay the amount today. So I asked Mr.Thilagar whether he will take DDs. He still staunchly refused to take DDs and only after some convincing by Mr.Chandraekhar he finally agreed.

And so at 2.00 PM I left the secretariat, after 2 hours of running around here and there in the hot sun, without paying the amount I had come to pay.

My questions are as follows.

1. Why is there no procedure for cash payment at the department when the rules for payment of fees clearly gives the option?
2. If there is no facility for payment of cash, then why did the letter say that payment can be made through cash?
3. Why did the letter not tell me the name of the drawee in case of demand drafts?
4. Why did Mr.Thilagar and Mr.Vilvam refuse to take even Demand Draft initially and agreed only when there was no other option?
5. Why is there no proper mechanism to even get a challan form for which I was made to run around so much and was finally not given?
6. Why is that not a single officer I met in the P&AR department all through the 2 hour ordeal knew where I could get a challan from?

The problems with non-cash mode of payments are many.

1. For Demand drafts, it is not always easy to find out the name of the drawee. Also even for paying 20 rupees as fee, we are forced to pay 50 rupees as exchange.
2. For Demand Drafts, I need to find out the name of the drawee, which is not easy to find in many Public Authorities
3. Treasury challans are also difficult, because the challan is not easy to get. And you need to go to RBI to do the payment.


Above all these, cash payment is the right of every citizen under the Right to Information act. It is hugely disappointing that the P&AR department which is the nodal agency for implementing RTI in the state, does not fulfill this basic requirement of the act even after three years of Right to Information act, 2005. As secretary of the P&AR department I request you to take immediate steps to ensure that these basic facilities are made available to the common man.

Thanking you.

Demonstration against the State Information Commission

Please spread the word about the demonstration.

Date: 16th March 2009, from 10 AM - 1 PM
Venue: Memorial Hall (Opposite to Government General Hospital. Near Chennai Central Railway Station)
Purpose: Demonstration against the poor functioning of the Tamil Nadu State Information Commission.

Background
The enactment of the Right to Information act, 2005 was expected to be a turning point in India's history as it was believed that this act would, for the first time, put both the common citizen and the Government servant in their right places. Of that of a master and a servant. And it did have wonderful effects. Citizens everywehere started demanding Information regarding the Government's functioning, and in the process ensuring their rights which they could not for all this time with other means. But this mail is not about the feel-good stories. It is about the biggest problem that the Right to Information act faces today in Tamil Nadu. And ironically, the problem is the Tamil Nadu Information Commission.
Ironical because, it is the Information Commission that was supposed to be the backbone of the act. Knowing fully well that Government servants would not easily part with Information about their functioing, the Act provided for setting up of a Central Information Commission and State Information commissions in each state whose powers are similar to that of a court. If an officer refuses to part with information, the Information Commission has to impose penalties on those officers. And it is this fear of punishment that forces the officer to disclose information.
But what is being observed today in the functioning of the Tamil Nadu State Information Commission is that, the Commission, far from the role enivsaged role of the being the saviour of the act, the functioning of the TN Information Commission is today the single biggest roadblock for an effective implementation of the Right to Information act in the state.

Problems
To see why the functioning of the Information Commission is a huge problem, the reasoning is straightforward. The three most important problems in the functioning of the State Information Commission are
1. Huge delays in disposal of cases. (close to 10 months)
2. Lenient attitude towards officers violating the act
3. And lack of follow-up of orders.

Consequences
The consequences of these problems are:
Due to problem 1 your cases take a very long time to be heard. This puts off most applicants from filing an appeal and emboldens the Government officers. And if you have the motivation to file an appeal with the commission and also have the patience to wait till the commission's order comes, you will be facing problem 2. The commission acts very leniently and only orders the officer to give you the information. No Show cause notice, no penalty, nothing. In the rare cases that the commission imposes a penalty, you face problem 3. No follow-up. Be it an order to supply information or a show cause notice for penalty or imposition of penalty itself, the commission just does not bother to follow-up. And so the most logical thing for the applicant to do next is to remind the commission that it has to do a follow-up. And no prizes for guessing, this takes the applicant back to the beginning where your reminder also takes a long time to be considered.

What we intend to do
A group of organisations interested in the effecive implementation of the Right to Information act, have made efforts at dialogues with the State Information Commission and have failed. Failed to the extent that the Chief Information Commissioner was even avoided giving us a date for a meeting with him. Hence we have decided to organise a demonstration against the commission's functioning at the Memorial hall in front of the Government General Hospital near the Central Railway station on 16th March 2009 from 10 AM - 1 PM.

We request you to join us in this effort in the interest of the common man. And also so that the efforts of so many people in bringing about such a legilsation in the first place would be in vain. Also help spreading the word. Let the citizens know how ineffectively the State Information Commission is functioning.

S.M.Arasu (Anti Corruption Movement)
Louis Menezes (Transparency International, India - TN Chapter)
L.S.Jeganathan (Tamil Nadu Lanjam Kodathor Iyakkam)
M.Sowmya (Citizen, consumer and civic Action Group)
Vijayanand (5th Pillar)
Siva Elango (Makkal Sakthi Iyakkam)
V.Gopalakrishnan (RTI Activist, MGR Nagar)
Rupesh Kumar (Corporate Accountability Desk)
V.Madhav (Association for India’s Development)

For more details please contact:
Madhav.
madhav.vishnubhatta@gmail.com
9840327303.

The actual letter sent to each of the Commissioners can be seen here.

Letter to the Tamil Nadu State Information Commission

1-Mar-2009
To:
Mr.S.Ramakrishnan
The Chief Information Commissioner,
Tamil Nadu State Information Commission.

Copy to:
Mr.G.Ramakrishnan,
State Information Commissioner,

Mr.R.Rathinasamy,
State Information Commissioner,

Mr.T.R.Ramasamy,
State Information Commissioner,

Mr.R.Perumalsamy,
State Information Commissioner,

Mr.T.Srinivasan,
State Information Commissioner,

Mrs.Sarada Nambi Arooran
State Information Commissioner.

The Right to Information Act was passed on 15th June 2005 and came into force on 13th October 2005. As the preamble says, this act was passed “in order to promote transparency and accountability in the working of every public authority”. The rationale was that “an informed citizenry and transparency of information which are vital to its functioning and also to contain corruption and to hold Governments and their instrumentalities accountable to the governed”.

Even with such a legislation, access to Information is not easy. There are vested interests at all levels of the government which would still prefer to keep the Government functioning shrouded in secrecy. And it is for this reason, that the State Information Commission has been formed under the Act. The Commission forms the backbone of the Right to Information Act, since it is the fear of penalty and/or recommendations of disciplinary proceedings, that forces the Government Servants to part with information, which they would otherwise not disclose. Hence, only an honest and efficient State Information Commission that strictly adheres to the Right to Information Act, can keep the Act alive.

Given below briefly are our observations on the functioning of the Commission.

1. Disposal rate
One of the most important parameters of the performance of any Information Commission is the disposal rate. The Commission has no data on its own performance. But there are many indicators which tell us how the State Information Commission is functioning. As of February end, the hearings for appeals filed in the beginning of June 2008 are being handled. This is about 9 months delay in holding hearings. In some cases the appeals are disposed of without a hearing and in such cases a written order is issued. Even in such cases there are delays of close to 6 months.
The possibility that the delay of nine months for conducting hearings is due to genuinely huge number of complaints is also belied by the data of the number of hearings conducted last year. In 2008, the number of hearings conducted at the commission was 1017. Four new Commissioners were appointed in 2008, and they have started functioning independently since August 2008. So looking at hearings from Aug-Dec 2008 the total number is 654 with a monthly average of 130. Considering that there are 7 commissioners, this comes to just 19 hearings per commissioner per month.
Moreover, in cases where the Public Authority refuses to give information even after a direction from the Commission, the appellant is forced to file a complaint again which again joins the queue and has to go through the nine months process, taking the total time for appeal to more than 1½ years.

2. Penalties:
Section 20(1) of the Right to Information Act clearly says that the State Information Commission “SHALL impose a penalty” in all cases where information has been delayed without “any reasonable cause” or has “knowingly given incorrect, incomplete or misleading information or destroyed information” or “malafidely denied the request for information”. Discretion is only in deciding whether there has been any reasonable cause or not, but once that is decided, penalty HAS to be imposed. It is mandatory under the act.
Despite this mandatory provision, the Commission does not pay heed to this provision almost all of the time. Penalties are imposed in very few cases. Penalties are the only reason why Public Authorities disclose information. And if the Commission does not impose penalties, the Public Authorities would have no reason to be afraid of the Commission, thus rendering the Act ineffective. Thanks to the Information Commision, today Public Authorities can happily refuse information safe in the knowledge of the fact that the commission imposes penalties very rarely.

3. Lack of follow-up of orders
The Commission issues a lot of Show Cause Notices and other directions to disclose information. But none of these are followed up. So all the Show Cause Notices issued actually mean nothing. But there is something even worse. Even the penalties imposed are not recovered. This is again because the commission does not bother to ensure that the rights of the applicants are protected and does not take any initiative to check whether their orders are implemented.

4. The commission itself does not implement the Right to Information Act. It does not have section 4 disclosures. It also does not answer Right to Information applications filed with it.

5. There is no data available with the Information Commission on its functioning. It does not know how many appeals and complaints it has got, how many penalties are imposed, how many show cause notices are issued.

6. Lack of proper filing system in the State Information Commission. Every time data is sought from the State Information Commission, the reply is that the information is not readily available and will involve going through lots of files to find the data. In some cases appeals have even gone missing from the Commission.

The first three issues identified in the workings of the State Information Commission are sufficient to kill the Act completely. First, cases are not heard for a long time, and when the cases are looked at and disposed, penalty requirements under the act are not adhered to, and in the rare case that penalty is imposed, they are not followed up. It does not need much to deduce how the commission would function.

The monthly average per commissioner clearly shows that the capacity of the Tamil Nadu Information Commission is greatly underutilized. A part of the problem is the fact that hearings are usually held in two member benches, which is really not warranted for hearing appeals and complaints under this Act. Instead the Commissioners may hear the appeals independently and work for the speedy disposal of the complaints and appeals. There is no reason why every case needs two or more commissioners. Every commissioner can easily handle cases independently. There might be a few complicated cases which might require a Bench of more than one commissioner, but that can only be an exception and not the rule.

The other problem is plain inefficiency. Even if Commissioners are working independently, the present rate of just 15 cases per month is nothing to be happy about. A single commissioner should handle 100 hearings easily in a month. But nothing of that sort is happening now.

A proper planning in allocation of the Commission’s work will easily resolve the follow-up issue. For example, having one Commissioner dedicated, to look at Show Cause Notices and decide whether penalties have to be imposed or not, would ensure that all orders of the Commission are complied with. Of course all commissioners can take up this role in rotation say once every two months. But without this, issuing Show Cause notices and even the very rare cases of the commission adhering to act and imposing penalties and, come to nothing. Moreover, posting some Commissioners in the districts could also be considered for the benefit of citizens living in places that are far away from the State Capital.

Our dialogue with Government of Tamil Nadu and State Information Commission

As groups interested in the proper implementation of the Right to Information act, we have been observing the functioning of the Commission since the time of its inception. Several consistent efforts have been put in by our groups, both individually and collectively, to address these issues. On 21st October, 2008 the Personnel & Administrative Reforms department organised a meeting at the Anna Institute of Management on the implementation of the Right to Information act. At this meeting the Chief Commissioner made a commitment that all the backlog of cases would be cleared by December 2008. But this commitment has not been fulfilled till date.

In order to have a continuous feedback and engagement with the Commission, we proposed a monthly meeting with the Chief Commissioner of which the first meeting was held on December 23rd 2008. In this meeting a group of 8 people representing the organizations Anti Corruption Movement, CAG (Citizen, consumer and civic action group), Makkal Sakthi Iyakkam, 5th Pillar and Association for India’s Development, met the Chief Commissioner in which the Chief Commissioner made some commitments at the request of the groups. They were

1.Putting out hard copies of the SIC decisions and cause lists at the reception of the Commission so that those who visit the commission can go through them.
2.Starting January 1st 2009, monthly statistics like the number of appeals, complaints, penalties, Show Cause Notices will be made available.
3.Clearing the back log of cases pending in the commission till December by end of January.
4.That the Commission will meet the requirements of RTI like Section 4 disclosures.

By end of January 2009 we learnt that the meeting was not taken seriously and that none of these commitments were implemented. Moreover, since January end, our repeated attempts to schedule a second meeting were in vain since the Chief Commissioner evaded giving a date for the meeting.

All our attempts to engage the Commission in dialogue and to solve these issues have been in vain. We all are of the opinion that the State Information Commission has not only under performed but has also gone against the letter and spirit of the Right to Information Act, in effect sabotaging the whole implementation of the Act in the State.

Since all our previous attempts at salvaging the Right to Information Act in the state have failed, we, the undersigned, have decided to hold a demonstration in front of the State Information Commission on March 16th pressing the following demands.

1.Immediate reduction in delays in disposal of appeals. All appeals to the State Information Commission should be disposed within 2 months of the appeal reaching the Commission.

2.Adherence to the penal provisions of the Right to Information Act, by imposing penalty in ALL cases where information has been delayed without reasonable cause, where information has been malafidely denied and where incorrect, incomplete and misleading information was given knowingly and where information has been destroyed.

3.Set up a proper and efficient mechanism for follow up of orders issued by the Commission. These orders could be directions to disclose information, or issuing Show Cause Notices or imposing penalties.

4.Evolve a set of guidelines or procedure on how appeals coming to the Commission will be handled and preparing guidelines for consistent decision making by all the Information Commissioners. Such guidelines/procedure should be made public.

5.Conduct monthly feedback discussions every month where members of the public can interact with all the Commissioners to highlight problems in the functioning of the commission and to discuss ideas to solve problems that come up.

6.Provide monthly reports on the functioning of the Information Commission at the feedback meeting, especially giving the following statistics.
a.Number of appeals/complaints received
b.Number of appeals/complaints disposed
c.Number of penalties imposed
d.Copies of SIC decisions and Cause lists available easily to the public through the internet and by keeping hard copies at the Commission

7.Adhere to the reporting requirements of section 25(1) of the Right to Information Act.


Yours sincerely,

S.M.Arasu (Anti Corruption Movement)
Louis Menezes (Transparency International, India - TN Chapter)
L.S.Jeganathan (Tamil Nadu Lanjam Kodathor Iyakkam)
M.Sowmya (Citizen, consumer and civic Action Group)
Vijayanand (5th Pillar)
Siva Elango (Makkal Sakthi Iyakkam)
V.Gopalakrishnan (RTI Activist, MGR Nagar)
Rupesh Kumar (Corporate Accountability Desk)
V.Madhav (Association for India’s Development)

Meeting to discuss further action plan - 24th Feb

Yesterday the following people met at Kodambakkam to discuss further action plans regarding the functioning of the State Information Commission.

1. Mr.Arasu (Anti Corruption Movement)
2. Mr.Bhanu (5th Pillar)
3. Sowmya (CAG)
4. Mr.Siva Elango (Makkal Sakthi Iyakkam)
5. Mr.Gopalakrishnan
6. Mr.Louis Menezes (Transparency International)
7. Mr.Chandrasekaran (represeting Transparency International)
8. Madhav (Association for India's Development)

There was consensus on the fact that the State Information Commission is functioning extremely poorly and that repeated attempts at dialogue havent yielded results and we should look at some drastic measures. Experiences were shared on how Mr.Arasu had received a reply after 6 months of filing a appeal saying that his appeal was incomplete (though it actually wasnt). Mr.Gopalakrishnan pointed out how two of his appeals were lost in teh commission. Also one PIO challenged him to go to the commission saying he knows Mr.T.Srinivasan. I pointed out that right now, appeals filed in Jun beginning were heard now.

Everybody felt that we had to have a protest and the procedure finalised was this.

We will send a letter to the Chief Commissioner, copied to all the other commissioners, listing out the failures of the Information Commission, and then informing them that a demonstration will happen on March 16th pressing a set of demands. This will be signed by all the organisations whose support that we can get. We will also hold a press conference a week before the protest where a copy of the letter will be given to the media, the failures highlighted and our demands publicised.

The letter will go to the Commissioners on Monday or Tuesday next week, since it also involves translation into Tamil.

RTI to the help of RTI

That decisions of the State Information Commission needs to be on the website has been a constant request from my side. But till now only the decisions till June 2008 are uploaded on the website (http://www.tnsic.gov.in/decision.htm). When I repeatedly raised this issue with the Chief Commissioner, he told me that the scanning was done but the NIC(National Informatics Centre) people were not uploading it to the website. Feeling very irritated with such delays I filed an RTI with NIC seeking the list of requests that had come to it from the Information Commission regarding the website and the status of each of those requests.

After a couple of days when I met the Additional Secretary of the Commission for a different reason, and he suddenly asked me if I had asked anything from the NIC. I told him yes. He then told me how somebody from NIC contacted him saying a petition had come to NIC. The Additional Secretary also then explained to me the problem the Commision was facing in uploading decisions in detail. Now I had a good idea of what their problem was. But he also told me that the NIC person had said that he would come to the State Information Commission to try addressing their issues, though they had already provided some software to the commission for uploading decisions.

Then I told the Ad.Sec that I have a reasonably good idea of how websites are maintained and that I could help in whatever way possible, and asked him if he would be ok with my being a part of his discussion with the NIC person whenever he comes. Unexpectedly, the Ad.Sec agreed and asked me to come the next day at 11.30 since the NIC person said he would come at that time. All eager, I went there the next day (after cancelling my plans of another meeting) and when I went there, I learnt that the NIC person was in some meeting and hence would not come. So I came back after giving the Additional Secretary my mobile number in case a discussion is scheduled on some other day

But filing that RTI application with the NIC turned out to be useful for two reaons.
1. The Ad.sec was happy the NIC person was coming to the commission since he said that, it would be very helpful for the people in the commission working on the uploading of the decisions to the website.
2. Now I had a better understanding of the problems the commission is facing in uploading the decisions (though it doesnt justify the huge delay) and also given me an opportunity to be a part of the discussions related to it at the State Information Commission.

TN State Information Commission's capacity utilisation

The State Information Commission of Tamil Nadu has 7 commissioners today. 3 of them have been from the beginning and 4 of them have added in 2008. Effectively, the new commissioners started working as independent commissioners from August (for some time before that they were getting "trained" by sitting along with the old commissioners for hearings). To look at the output of the 7 commissioners I looked at the number of hearings held in 2008. And here is what I found.

Capacity of the commission
To roughly calculate the capacity of the commission to conduct hearings, let us assume that a commissioner can conduct 10 hearings in a day. And assuming there are 20 working days in a month, this would mean that each one of them can conduct 200 hearings in a month. With 7 commissioners, this would mean that the capacity of the commission is 1400 hearings per month. Though the number 10 for the number of cases per commissioner per day is underestimated, I guess it would be compensated by the fact that hearings cannot really happen on all 20 working days, due to commissioners taking leave occasionally, or some other paper work in the commission. So the capacity of the commissions is 1400 cases per month. And now let us see what the actual performance look like.

The actual numbers
The number of hearings conducted in each month is given below.

Monthwise Number of hearings conducted by the TN State Information Commission in 2008

Month	# hearings
January	66
February	41
March	16
April	98
May	26
June	64
July	52
August	118
September	180
October	71
November	68
December	80
Total	880

The number of hearings held during the 5 months From Aug-Dec (the period when all the 7 commissioners were functioning) comes to 517. And their capacity in these 5 months is 7000 hearings (1400 x 5). So the capacity utilisation is about 7.5 %. This is the ridiculous state in which the State Information Commission is in today.

We can have a slightly more detailed look at this underutilisation. What really happens is that for each hearing a 2 or 3 member bench normally conducts the hearing. Which is really a waste. Most of the cases that come up are straight forward cases, where even half a commissioner would suffice. There is no denying that there will be come complicated cases where a bench will be needed, but there are very few such cases. This kind of allocation wastes the resources. It could be argued that there is only one court hall in the commission. But the solutions to that could be that hearings could be held right in the rooms of the Commissioners, since each commissioner is given a spacious enough room to hold 10 people easily. Another solution could be commissioners travelling to districts to hear cases (which is happening even now sometimes).

Monthwise % of hearings handled by a single commissioner benchin 2008

Month	% of hearings handled by an individual commissioner
January	79
February	83
March	13
April	82
May	31
June	6
July	37
August	17
September	39
October	17
November	7
December	10

If you look at the percentages given above you can see that though the percentage of such individual commissioners handling cases was decent in the initial 4 months, then on it declined. The increase in commissioners saw an increase in the quantum of cases in August and September (refer to the first table) but after that the monthly number of hearings per month came back to almost the same numbers as it was before the appointment of the new commissioners.

If you look at the number of cases handled after the new commissioners have come, as seen before it would come to 517 (from Aug-Dec). So their monthly average is 517/5 = 103.4. So each commissioner's monthly average is 103.4/5 = 14.77. Assuming that there are 20 days in a month, each commissioner's daily number of hearings comes to 14.77/20 which is an incredibly ridiculous 0.74. This means that on an average each commissioner is not even conducting 1 hearing per day.

I request you to just spare a minute for this and think about it. Really think. Think of all the facilities that the commissioners get at the tax payer's expense. A car, an air conditioned office, a hefty pay packet, peons at your beck and call and lots more. And what do they do in return. Handle .75 cases per day.

Assets Disclosure by MLAs and Councillors

It has been close to 1.5 months since I wrote anything here. It was mostly because I was travelling quite a bit. And so here is what has been keeping me busy.

The RTI applications I filed regarding status of assets disclosures by MLAs and Corporation Councillors have yielded some interesting data. Initially an RTI filed with the TN assembly regarding status of assets disclosure of the MLAs of the present and previous assembly revealed that not a single MLA has done their annual assets disclosure. But the reply stated that the resolution to this effect was passed on 27th Aug 1969. The proceedings of that assembly session can be seen here. Page 12 of the pdf file shows that the then CM Mr.M.Karunanidhi moved the motion for assets disclosure. This was passed with retrospective effect from the year 1966-1967. It has also been mentioned that some MLAs and ministers did indeed file their returns after this. But today the practice is probably long forgotten. So I filed an RTI to find out exactly when this procedure died out. I have asked for details of disclosure of all the 42 years starting from 1967 till this year. This revealed the following data.

1. In the last 12 years not a single MLA has filed his/her returns.
2. Since 1973-74 not a single Chief Minister has submitted his returns. That is, for the last 35 years the CMs have not submitted their returns.

The complete details can be seen as an excel sheet here.

As for the councillors of Chennai Corporation, according to the Madras City Municipal Corporation (Disclosure of Assets) Rules, 1973 Members of the Legislative Council (MLCs) of the Chennai Corporation should disclose their assets details on March 31st of every year. Here again I have filed an RTI with the Chennai Corporation asking for compliance details. I had asked for details starting 2002. But I have received data only for the last 2 years - 2007 and 2008. It showed that in both the years out of 155 councillors only 25 have filed their returns. It is the same 25 councillors in both the years.

Both these were covered in the Hindu as can be seen here.

http://www.hindu.com/2009/01/13/stories/2009011354930500.htm

http://www.thehindu.com/2009/01/20/stories/2009012057700300.htm

I have talked to a lawyer Mr.Krishnananth (Nity gave me the contact) regarding filing a case in the High Court asking it to issue a writ to the MLAs to do the disclosures or to the government to ensure disclosures. Let us see what happens.