Letter seeking transparent appointment of Information Commissioners

I had drafted a letter to the Chief Secretary and the Secretary of Personnel and Administrative reforms seeking a public consultation to evolve a transparent appointment procedure for appointment of Information Commissioners to the State Information Commission. Then I got it signed by some eminent people in Tamil Nadu and by groups interested in RTI. The scanned version of the letter and it doc version can be seen here. The related news reports can be seen below. As the letter says the Chief Information Commissioner is going to retire in Aug 2010 and another Information Commissioners is going to retire in Oct 2010. I see it as the start of the campaign, as I am sure there will be a lot of work to be done on this. Arving Kejriwal is planning to file a PIL in Delhi on appointments to the CIC. I am in touch with him as he said I can do something similar in TN. Though I dont know what the grounds of his PIL are, when I pointed out that an earlier PIL filed in Delhi HC on the same issue was dismissed, he replied that he now had more information on hand and hence could make a much better case. Let us see.

The Hindu: Transparency sought in SIC commissioners’ appointments
Dinamani: தகவல் ஆணையர்களின் நியமனத்தில் வெளிப்படைத்தன்மை தேவை
The Times of India: Appoint info panel chief in transparent fashion: RTI activists

Functions, they indeed are!!!

An RTI application filed with the Chennai Corporation has revealed that on a day when 2 flyovers and a subway were inaugurated by the Chief Minister, close to 24 Lakhs were spent on the inaugural functions. This is equivalent to the amount that is allocated to each councillor for his/her ward improvement works for a complete year, which is 25 Lakhs. This was featured in Times of India today and the Mayor has justified it too, saying this is the same as was spent by the previous government. They just dont seem to get it. Even assuming this is true, why is their benchmark the previous government. If the previous government was corrupt, is a claim that this government is less corrupt good enough a justification. The Mayor also says that this is usual for functions involving the CM. What the heck? Whose money is this?? The functions are essentially a platform for the ruling party to publicise their "achievements" and hence is as good as the political meetings that they normally convene. Only this time, it is being done in the name of inaugurating a flyover, and all expenses borne by you-know-who.

The actual replies can be seen here.

Update: Tamil Osai, the party newspaper of Pattali Makkal Katchi (Headed by Mr.S.Ramadoss) has written an editorial on this. The editorial (in Tamil) can also be seen in the same link as given above for the replies.

Transparent appointment of Information Commissioners and other updates

Right now, I am working on Transparent Appointment of Information Commissioners in Tamil Nadu. In this direction, as a first step I have drafted a letter to be sent to the Chief Secretary of Tamil Nadu and the Secretary of P&AR department, asking them to hold a public consultation to decide on a procedure for appointment of Information Commissioners. The letter can be seen here.

Another important development is that I have scheduled a meeting with the Secretary of DoPT, Government of India on friday (12th Feb 2010). I had fixed this up on behalf of the group that had previously filed the PIL in Delhi HC seeking transparent appointments in CIC. We are in the process of drafting a memorandum and demanding a time bound response from them. So I will be travelling to Delhi this weekend to be a part of this meeting.

Regarding the assets disclosure of IAS and IPS officers, the Judge had earlier reserved her judgment in this case in Dec. Now after reminding her, she passed a judgment dismissing the writ. The order, a copy of which is not in our hands yet, but the lawyer was allowed to look at the order in the court itself, essentially reiterates what the SIC has said. But we had also enclosed CIC decisions where assets disclosure of IAS and IPS officers were allowed. To this, the Judge mentioned in the judgment that "though the lawyer referred to the decisions of CIC copies of these were not produced", whereas, the initial set of documents enclosed along with the affidavit itself contained copies of not one but two CIC decisions. It was such a stupid statement to make. Even assuming that the docs were missing, (which is not the case anyway) it is the Judge's duty to ask for copies and ensure that a fair judgment is passed. I wonder how she can ignore those important CIC decisions when passing such a judgment. Krishananth said that it will make it all the more easy to challenge the decision in a bench. We are waiting for a copy of the order, for us to file an appeal.

As for the DVAC order in our favour, I am yet to get information from DVAC. The two weeks time given by the judge will be over with this week. But Krishnananth, has meanwhile filed a caveat, which would mean that if the DVAC goes on appeal to a division bench, then the bench wont hear the case or order a stay without giving us notice. This would help us put our arguments forward even before the division bench considers granting an interim stay.

HC dismisses DVAC's Writ Petition

I had written sometime back that DVAC has challenged the SIC's order, asking it to disclose information relating to investigations on corruption, in the Madras High Court. This came up before Justice Chandru, who has been disposing of a lot of RTI related cases in the past 10 days. He dismissed it without even giving notice to the respondents.

Actually this was stayed by the High Cout in Nov 2009. This has now been dismissed. There was no effort for this on my part. The case was heard last week, and I learnt about it only the day before, when Krishananth, the lawyer who is helping me out with the court cases, enquired about the case, learnt this and informed me. Immediately on Monday, at the end of the court, Krishnananth made a "mention" to the Judge that he was representing me, a respondent, and that we havent received notice for the case yet. The Judge said that he was anyway going to dictate the judgment the next day (Yesterday). So I was present in the court yesterday, and the judge just dictated two lines. "The Writ Petition is dismissed. The petitioner is ordered to supply the information sought for". Here are the media reports in this regard.

DVAC bound by RTI act: Court
Vigilance dept must give info on graft cases: HC
'DVAC must provide info on graft'
http://docs.google.com/View?id=dg3785zc_80dvgr34cz
DVAC not totally exempted from RTI: Madras HC

The SIC decision that was challenged can be seen here.

Meeting with the P&AR Secretary

Mr.Arasu (Anti Corruption Movement), Mr.Ranganathan (Transparency International) and I were part of the meeting with the P&AR secretary on 14th December 2009. We started the meeting with a follow-up based on a letter that AKV had sent to the Chief Secretary after a meeting with him.

We asked the P&AR secretary about a regular review by the Heads of Departments regarding RTI. He said he will consider it and if necessary pass necessary instructions to the various Heads of Departments.

On the issue of lack of awareness regarding Section 4 within the Government, he said that after the previous meeting with the Chief Secretary, an instruction had already been sent to all the secretariat heads of departments asking them to update their website regarding Section 4 disclosures. He also read aloud the instructions that went out to all of us, and also showed us the file having some acknowledgments some compliance reports etc.

When the issue of different departments not replying to RTI applications in time, and giving vague and incorrect replies, he said that he could not do anything about replies coming from other departments. When asked about training, he said that trainings are being given regularly through Anna Institute of Management.

As for the annual report to be placed before the Assembly, he said that the P&AR department had called for the report from the Commission during each of the last four years but the SIC did not submit the report.

Then we also pointed out that there was no procedure at the Information Commission for disposal of appeals, he said that it was upto the Commission to decide on such a procedure. Then Mr.Arasu pointed out that the Central Government had drafted a procedure, he asked Mr.Arasu to show him the relevant parts, which Mr.Arasu did. He seemed a bit surprised at this and said he would consider it.

Then we raised the issue of understaffing of the State Information Commission. I showed him a document given by the P&AR under RTI regarding the staff situation of the Commission. After looking at that, he said that he remembered sending some letter in this regard and immediately called up one of his juniors and asked him to look into the vacancies. He also told us that there are people available with him and that he can send these people to fill in the vacancies. I also showed him a press release where CIC was given 116 additional staff recently. For this he said that if the Information Commission needed more staff, they need to prepare a detailed justification saying something like, since so many appeals come in daily, 1 person can register so many appeals and thereby working out the staff requirement. Once a detailed requirement comes to them, he said he would consider it.

As for recovery of Penalties imposed by the State Information Commission (which, as per my memory, was agreed upon as the responsibility of the State Government at the previous meeting with the Chief Secretary. This was denied by the P&AR secretary) he said that the Government was not responsible and it was for the Information Commission to follow up on that.

On the whole, we could also see his unhappiness with the State Information Commission passing (in his opinion)strict orders against the Information Commission and also refused to comment anything about the Commission. He also said that the Commission was doing other people's work instead of just enquiring into appeals.

Vijayanand who arrived a bit late, could not join the meeting since the officers outside did not let them in, since the meeting had already started.

Writ against SIC's orders on IAS assets disclosure order filed ...

After a hectic 3 days, the writ petition has been filed today against TN SIC's order not allowing disclosure of IAS assests. It might come up for admission by Saturday. Of course the first step is that it will be admitted and the respondents will be sent notices, so there is not much to expect on saturday. It is just a formality. The case will most probably be taken up for detailed hearing only in Jan, since the respondents have to be given time to submit their response. Moreover, the high court is on leave from 23rd to New year. So things will start moving only in Jan. Similarly the case filed by the DVAC against the SIC's order ordering disclosure of information will also come up for hearing only in January. I have engaged the same advocate Mr.Krishnananth, who helped me with the MLA assets PIL for both of these. He is doing it purely for its public interest value. He does not depend on his practice for his income. So he refused to take any money, but after insistence my side, has asked me to just give him whatever I feel like.

The Secretary of P&AR department, had given an appointment for a meeting with him on Monday, in response to a request I gave a month back. The meeting was not entirely fruitful, in the sense that he was obviously unahppy with the SIC giving strongly worded orders against the government (he particularly referred to an order in my case, where I had complained that the implementation of RTI act in the P&AR dept itself was shabby). Also for any request that we make, he says he will consider it and that he will need the consent of the Chief Secretary. The present CS is not the person who will do anything good for RTI (If you recall, I had mentioned earlier that he was the commissioner of DVAC who pushed for the DVAC exemption from RTI). But there was one good news that came out of the meeting. It seems the CS wil retire in a month's time. That gives me some hope. Once the new CS comes in, we will see if anything positive can be expected from the government.

A few updates - DVAC, IAS officers Assets Disclosure etc

Here are the updates regarding a few things that I have been working on.

The State Information Commission had ordered that DVAC, which was exempted from the act, still has to give corruption related information. As expected, DVAC has challenged this decision in the High Court, and the HC has given an interim stay and will hear the case after 8 weeks. This has been mentioned today in the Times. I have been added as a respondent in the case, which saves me the effort of impleading myself :-). Past posts about this issue can be seen here, here and here.

I did an analysis of the number of cases in the High Court challenging SIC's orders. The registrar told me that there were 37 cases where an interim stay has been granted. This one is probably the 38th. Many of these have been challenging the pro-disclosure judgments of the high court, and some are challenging the penalties. A complete list can be seen here. I had given this information to Times of India and Dinamani a Tamil newspapers. Times of India clubbed it with the DVAC news and published it. Dinamani highlighted this separately which can be seen here.

TN State Information Commission has ordered that assets disclosure statements of IAS officers will not be disclosed. This decision was given as part of a long 12 page order. The idea, I think, was to give the impression of having made a well reasoned case, but the whole order is nothing but saying that the assets details are personal information and hence cannot be disclosed unless there is a prima facie credible allegation of corruption. A weird judgment considering that the Commission had earlier passed orders wherein it had ordered disclosure of all the officers of Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board in 3 districts. Naturally, a prima facie allegation of corruption cannot exist for ALL the officers. But the real reason is that in the earlier case, it was about "ordinary" officers and not about IAS officers. Of course, I am challenging it in the High Court and have completed the inital draft of the affidavit. Will post it here once finalised. The writ challenging this order will be filed most probably next week, since Mr.Krishnananth, the advocate who also helped me with the MLA assets disclosure PIL, is back in Chennai only this saturday.

Another development on the SIC front apart from the Commission starting to follow up on Show Cause Notices issued eariler, is that I have obtained legal opinion from Ms.Sudha Ramalingam, a leading advocate, to the effect that there were no legal issues involved in issuing Show Cause Notices for penalties along with the summons itself. I have sent a covering letter along with the copy of the legal opinion to all the Commissioners and the Registrar. I sent this on 2nd December 2009. Let me see what the response is, if at all there is one.

On the Chief Central Information Commissioner appointment, the Delhi HC had dismissed the PIL filed. After that there has been a few things have happened. We were discussing whether we need to go the Supreme Court against the Delhi HC's judgment, and finally decided on getting a "Certificate" from the Delhi High Court to go directly on appeal to Supreme Court. If not, it seems, one needs to file a Special Leavel Petition (SLP) with the Supreme Court and then go for appeal. These were entirely new things to me, so I just let the better informed people on the group to decide things. Meanwhile, yesterday we learnt that the Chief Information Commissioner was in fact not moving to J&K because the SC had slapped Contempt Notices on the Commission for putting up controversial decisions given by them against the Supreme Court in RTI applications filed by Subhash Chandra Agarwal, an RTI activist, on their website. Supreme Court had already stayed these decisions too. The decisions can be downloaded from http://cic.gov.in/CIC-Orders/WB-24112009-01.pdf

Some relevant links are given below.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/SC-stays-CIC-order-on-judges-appointment-and-correspondence/articleshow/5299228.cms
http://www.merinews.com/article/contempt-notice-to-cic-habibullah/15790132.shtml

That's it for now.