Penalty of Rs. 5,000 imposed on Tahsildar for delaying info under RTI
26 Feb, 2013An application was filed with the Tahsildar of Bantwal taluk in Mangalore under the Right to Information (RTI) Act sseking to get information about the taluk office records. The tahsildar informed the applicant that the cataloguing and indexing of office records was under progress as per a revenue department circular and the information will be provided to him only after the completion of the process.
The applicant then approached the State Information Commission (SIC) claiming that the district administration had already given an undertaking before the Commission that all tahsildars had undertaken the task of cataloguing and indexing of records of their offices. The appellant also requested the SIC that information be provided to him free of cost and that the penalty be imposed on the tahsildar.
The SIC, on hearing the case, served a show cause notice to the tahsildar and found the response from him to be unacceptable. The commission then imposed a penalty of Rs. 5,000 on him for delaying the information under the RTI Act and asked him to submit a report enclosing the chalan receipt of penalty payment.