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Letter of protest from Orissa to Arvind Kejirwala on study for award by PCRF
Dear Mr. Arvind Kejirwala
To-day on 29.10.09, I came across a news item in various local Oriya news papers like DHARITRI, PRAGATIVADI where It was found that you have congratulated Mr. D. N. Padhi, Orissa Chief Information Commissioner as best performing Commissioner in India. I seriously object it and your nomination procedure for selecting Mr. Padhi as best performer.
While going through your mail to RTI Activist groups of Kerala who have seriously objected your awarding giving endeavour, I came to know that you have taken two parameters like (a) disclosure of information to complainant/appellant by Information Commissions and (b) Deterrent Impact: Percentage of cases in which penalties were imposed.
In these two fields, the performance of Information Commission is worst in Orissa. The bad performance of Orissa Commission has made the activists and Citizens disappointed and frustrated.
You have mentioned that you have drawn the conclusion from the orders downloaded from the website of the Commission. Now the question is raised is it downloaded randomly or total cases of a quarter. If it is downloaded randomly, then it is wrong. It is better take a disposal of cases of a quarter.
I do present here statistics of disposal cases of a quarter of Orissa Information Commission.
Analysis of Hearing and final decision of Orissa Information Commissioners in a Quarter ( July to Sept.’09)
|
Sl.No |
Month |
No. of cases supposed to be heard by both the Commissions as per Cause List |
|
1 |
July’2009 |
303 |
|
2 |
August’2009 |
272 |
|
3 |
Sept.2009 |
153 |
|
|
Total |
728 |
- Within this quarter, both the Commissioner has heard total no. of 728 cases.
- No. of cases heard by one Commissioner within 3 months is 364
- No. of cases heard by one commissioner in a month is 182
- If 24 days is taken as dates for hearing in a month, then a single commissioner heard only 8 cases per day.
- In this quarter, both the commissioners have disposed of 200 cases ( 184 complaint case and 16 second appeal cases) as per figure available in the website.
- One Commissioner has disposed off 33 cases per month. It means approximately 1 case in a day ( 24 days taken as date for hearing in a month)
Please judge the performance of the Orissa Commission from this stistics.
In Orissa, Functioning of Orissa Commission is dismal. The complaint cases filed by the citizens take years together ( two to three years) for final disposal with six to eight times hearing. When a citizen gets information after two years with the final disposal orders , the information gets irrelevant for the citizens. Even in hundreds of cases, the citizens have not got information despite intervention of the Commission. The Commission has precariously failed to ensure it ( for example CC No- 105/2007) on the ground that information is not available in the office as presented by PIO. The office of the Orissa Commission is also going redundant for citizens which we discovered in the State Convention on RTI organized in Bhubaneswar on 22nd and 23rd November’09. Many citizens, RTI Activist shared their discontentment over functioning of the Commission and denial of hustice to them. I will share with you the details report for your reference.
Secondly, in case of penalty cases which you have referred, it is horrible in Orissa. If we take total complaint and appeal cases as violation of RTI Act for which a citizens has made complaint or appeal, the Commission has imposed penalty on less than 10% of cases. The PIOs who have got penalty are lower level officers like Panchayat Executive Officers, Junior clerks, diarist, assistant etc. not any officers of the high rank of OAS, IPS, OPS, OJS, IFS, OFS etc. though they are found guilty. How could you conclude that the Orissa Information Commission has acted properly. It is totally useless. If you want more information, please go through the study report on “Status of RTI in Orissa-2008”published by PRIA, New Delhi. If you require any more information we will be happy to provide you.
Keeping in view the extremely dismal performance of the Orissa Commission, we have made a lot of complaints to Governor to constitute an enquiry under section 17 of RTI Act.
I request you not to do such type of study in the greater interest of the country. It will simply kill RTI in India in general and RTI in Orissa in particular. My request to you is not to make RTI mockery which we have got as weapon after protracted struggle for a transparent and accountable governance system in the country.
Thanks
Pradip Pradhan
RTI Activist
Orissa
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