CIC warned the appellant that if he comes up with second appeals with such useless & vengeance-full questions, costs may be imposed on him equivalent to the value of time the public authority spent in dealing with the useless RTI questions
13 Jun, 2015Information regarding employees working with DTC was sought. CIC: appellant has been furnished with all the desired information. The Commission admonished the appellant for misuse of the RTI Act against DTC. Appellant is holding the entire DTC to ransom and is causing huge loss of money, energy and working hours of various officers of DTC by asking the entire personal information of various employees from different depots. Commission advised the DTC to keep this order along with all earlier orders of Commission in response to the appellant’s second appeals in their official web site under the heading ‘Misuse of RTI and response of DTC’ and any other RTI applications filed by the appellant in future shall be referred to that web site. Whenever his second appeal comes before the Commission, the entire record should be brought before the Commission so that the Commission can take a considered view of not wasting time any more. Commission warned the appellant that if he comes up with second appeals before the Commission with such useless and vengeance-full questions, it would not hesitate to impose costs on him to be paid by him to the Public Authority equivalent to the loss of value of the time they spent in dealing with these useless RTI questions.
ORDER
1. The appellant through his RTI application dt 26.11.2013 is seeking 8 point information, viz.
total no. of employees working with DTC, no. of employees whose personal files are with DTC and whose not, no of employees employed to look after the files etc. CPIO on 20.12.2013 has provided the information on point no 1,2 & 4. Aggrieved with the CPIO reply, the appellant made first appeal on10.2.2014. FAA on 3.2.2014 directed the CPIO(HQ), Admin (HQ), PLD (HQ), add CAOI to provide the information on points nos. 4,5,6 & 7 within 15 days. On noncompliance of FAA order, the appellant made second appeal before the Commission.
DECISION
2. Both the parties made their submissions in all the 5 appeals above which admittedly are more or less on the same subject matter. The Commisison heard the submissions and has perused the record in the file. It is evident that the appellant has been furnished with all the desired information by the Public Authority. There is no cause for this second appeal before the Commisison. The Commission observes that this is yet another case of misuse of RTI Act. The appellant Mr. Narain Singh is holding the entire DTC to ransom making dozens of officers are engaged in collecting information to the questions posed by him, which do not serve any purpose. The appellant claims that he is very much interested in saving the money of DTC, but in fact he is causing huge loss of money, energy and working hours of various officers of DTC by asking the entire personal information of various employees from different depots and he necessarily brings every case to the level of Second Appeal before the Commission, wasting the time of first appellate authority and the Commission. After continuously observing the appellant’s second appeals and dozens of his RTI applications, the Commission comes to the conclusion that this appellant, Mr. Narain Singh has a property dispute with his elder brother Mr. Hoshiar Singh employed in the DTC and the latter happened to be most unfortunate employee of DTC, about whom the appellant is seeking information through dozens of his RTI applications addressed to the DTC and when the Commisison is resisting this misuse, he is coming up with different kinds of questions which apparently look like unconnected to his brother and does not serve any public interest.
3. The Commission thinks that this is a fit case where the Commission has to use its powers to stop misuse of RTI Act so that this will save the persons who are genuinely in need of the RTI Act. The other most important aspect of public interest is to save DTC and its dozens of officers from the trauma, harassment and serious diversion of their working time for answering the futile, vengeance-full and useless questions. The Commission advises the DTC to keep this order along with all earlier orders of Commission in response to the appellant’s second appeals in their official web site under the heading ‘Misuse of RTI and response of DTC’ and any other RTI applications filed by the appellant in future shall be referred to that web site. Whenever his second appeal comes before the Commission, the entire record should be brought before the Commission so that the Commission can take a considered view of not wasting time any more. The Commission admonishes the appellant for misuse of the RTI Act against DTC. The Commission also hopes that better sense will prevail in the appellant Mr. Narain Singh and he would not harass the DTC any more. If the same continues, DTC may have initiate appropriate action so that public authority time is not wasted for this frivolous cases and officers are not put to further harassment any more by the people like the appellant. The Commission would prefer to censure this appellant.
4. It is a shame that senior officer of DTC had to be totally engaged with a reckless petitioner, who misused the RTI to wreck vengeance against his brother, in the process harassed the public authority and consumed the valuable time which should have been used for the people.
5. The Commission also warns the appellant if he comes up with second appeals before the Commission with such useless and vengeance-full questions, it would not hesitate to impose costs on him to be paid by him to the Public Authority equivalent to the loss of value of the time they spent in dealing with these useless RTI questions.
6. The order of this Commission in case CIC/SA/A/2014/000543 & CIC/SA/A/2014/000652 also shall be read as part of this order.
9. With the above observations, the Commission rejects all these appeal of the appellant.
(M.Sridhar Acharyulu)
Information Commisisoner
Citation: Sh. Narain Singh v. Delhi Transport Corporation in (1) File No.CIC/SA/A/2014/000603, (2) File No.CIC/SA/A/2014/001200 (3) File No.CIC/SA/A/2014/001384 (4) File No.CIC/SA/A/2014/001399 (5) File No.CIC/SA/A/2014/001439