The Appellant sought information in reference to his Complaint regarding demand of bribe by the LIC Agent and related information - CIC directed the LIC to furnish the decision on his Complaint either in the form of the Note-sheet or an Office Order
20 Feb, 2021O R D E R
1. The Appellant filed an application under the Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI Act) before the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) Life Insurance Corporation of India, Manager (CRM), Divisional Office-1, Jeewan Prakash, Bhawani Singh Road, Post Box No.65, Jaipur. The Appellant sought information in reference to his Complaint No. dated 10.08.2016 for demanding bribe by the LIC Agent Shri Jwala Prasad Bunkar (Agency no. as mentioned in the RTI application), the queries are as under:-
(i) “Rules applicable for misconduct by the LIC Agents demanding bribe for transferring the policy from other branch;
(ii) Name of the Competent Authority to take action for misconduct against the LIC Agents including name, address & telephone number of Chief Vigilance Officer of LIC NZ Rajasthan;
(iii) Supply action taken report on his Complaint No. dated 10.08.2016 along with photocopy of the concerned file notings.”
2. The CPIO, vide its letter dated 25.09.2018, provided a point-wise response to the Appellant. Dissatisfied with the response of the CPIO on point no. 03, the Appellant approached the FAA. The First Appellate Authority, vide its order dated 13.11.2018, upheld the CPIO’s response and provided additional information on point no. 03 of the application enclosing 04 pages of information. Thereafter, the Appellant filed a Second Appeal under Section 19(3) A second appeal against the decision under sub-section (1) shall lie within ninety days from the date on which the decision should have been made or was actually received, with the Central Information Commission or the State Information Commission: Provided that the Central Information Commission or the State Information Commission, as the case may be, may admit the appeal after the expiry of the period of ninety days if it is satisfied that the appellant was prevented by sufficient cause from filing the appeal in time. of the RTI Act before the Commission, requesting that the information in respect of point no. 03 of the RTI application should be provided to him and that action should be taken against the CPIO for furnishing incomplete information.
Hearing:
3. The Appellant attended the hearing through audio-call. The Respondent, Ms. Sonali, CPIO attended the hearing through audio-call. The written submissions of both the parties were taken on record.
4. The Appellant reiterated the contents of his RTI application and submitted that complete and satisfactory information on point no. 03 regarding the action taken on his Complaint dated 10.08.2016, was not received by him, till date.
5. The Respondent submitted that the information sought had already been furnished to the Appellant by the CPIO/FAA within the stipulated time period. With regard to point no. 03, the correspondences taken place between the Public Authority and the said Agent was provided.
6. On being queried by the Commission regarding the disclosure of broad outcome of action taken on Appellant’s Complaint dated 10.08.2016, no cogent reply was offered by the Respondent present during the hearing.
Decision:
7. The Commission, after hearing both the parties at length and on perusal of records, directs the Respondent to furnish the decision on his Complaint dated 10.08.2016 as taken by the Competent Authority either in the form of the Note-sheet or an Office Order, as the case may be, as sought under point 03 of the RTI application, to the Appellant, within a period of 15 days from the date of receipt of this order.
8. As regards point no. 01 and 02 of the RTI application, no further intervention of the Commission is required.
9. With the above direction, the Appeal is disposed of.
10. Copy of the decision be provided free of cost to the parties.
Neeraj Kumar Gupta
Information Commissioner
Citation: Roshan Lal Chopra v. Life Insurance Corporation of India in Second Appeal No. CIC/LICOI/A/2018/637635, Date of order: 22.09.2020