Information Commission comes down heavily on Chandigarh PIOs
18 Nov, 2013
An application was filed with the public information officer (PIO) of department of finance of Chandigarh administration under the Right to Information (RTI) Act seeking to get information regarding grants and types of grants issued to health, police and forest departments of the union territory.
The finance department forwarded the application to the respective departments for further processing but none of the departments provided the requested information to the applicant. After repeated appeals, only the forest department provided sufficient information. As per the applicant, the police department provided misleading information and the health department could provide only incomplete information even after repeated requests.
The applicant then approached the Information Commission for remedy. After hearing the case, the Commission has pulled up the PIOs for their lenient attitudes towards RTI applications and has ordered them to disclose all the relevant information to the appellant within three weeks.